Stop Telling Yourself You’re Bad at “People Stuff”

Summary

Martijn Versteeg, founder of Group Effort and organizational psychologist, challenges the common belief among tech leads that they are inherently bad at “people stuff.” He argues that human behavior follows systems that can be learned and applied, just like technical systems. Versteeg introduces a model of six universal human needs—certainty, variety, growth, status, connection, and giving—that can predict behavior and be used to improve team dynamics and one-on-one conversations.

A significant portion of the discussion focuses on the top challenges faced by engineering leaders, with conflict management being a primary theme. Versteeg provides a concrete model for delivering bad news: state it within 10 seconds, separate the issue from the person, acknowledge the recipient’s feelings, and suggest pausing to allow for emotional processing. He emphasizes that avoiding conflict, while a good strategy for individual contributors, is a barrier that leaders must overcome.

The conversation explores the psychological principles that hinder growth, such as the tendency to avoid pain more than to seek pleasure and to prioritize short-term rewards over long-term benefits. Versteeg advises leaders to reframe challenges by asking what the long-term consequences of inaction are. He also addresses the critical transition from hands-on technical work to leadership, using the metaphor of a vanilla orchid that must drop its ground roots to grow taller, illustrating that leaders must let go of tasks only they can do to avoid becoming organizational bottlenecks.

Further topics include the importance of developing a product mindset beyond just executing requirements, the potential psychological dangers of AI and large language models (LLMs) without proper “digital hygiene,” and the value of peer groups for leaders. Versteeg concludes with three key pieces of wisdom: sometimes you must slow down to speed up, knowledge uninvested in action is useless, and tech leaders must learn to speak the language of business.

Recommendations

Books

Hooked by Nir Eyal — Mentioned in the context of how recommender models hack our brains to keep us engaged, similar to concerns about LLMs.
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey — Referenced as a book Martijn rereads every year, gaining new insights each time as an example of how wisdom comes from repeated engagement, not just consumption.

Concepts

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs — Discussed and compared to Martijn’s six-needs model. Described as a more zoomed-out, higher-level assessment of human motivation, useful for understanding basic physiological and safety needs.
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) & DISC — Referenced as examples of popular personality tools with low scientific validity for predicting stable behavior over time. Critiqued for potentially limiting people with labels (e.g., “I can’t do this because I’m blue”).

Websites

agilemanifesto.org — Recommended as essential reading for anyone practicing Scrum or Agile, to understand the foundational principle of “working software over comprehensive documentation.”
groupeffort.nl/action — A free training offered by Martijn on taking action, consisting of four 5-minute sessions designed to help people start applying knowledge.

Topic Timeline

00:00:00 — Introduction to the myth of being bad at people skills — Martijn Versteeg is introduced as an organizational psychologist who works with CTOs and engineering leaders. He immediately challenges the common self-limiting belief among tech leads that they are not good at “people stuff,” asserting that this is a lie and that psychology has learnable systems, just like technology.
00:03:12 — Career turning points and the importance of small iterations — When asked about career turning points, Versteeg deliberately avoids naming specific events to prevent listeners from dismissing them as irrelevant. Instead, he emphasizes that personal growth, like coding, is about iteration and small steps, not single monumental moments.
00:08:54 — A system for predicting human behavior: The six needs model — Versteeg presents a core psychological model: all human behavior is driven by six needs—certainty, variety, growth, status, connection, and giving. He explains that these needs are subjective and universal. When multiple needs drop below a threshold (around 5 out of 10), people become disengaged and may leave. This model can be used for self-assessment and in one-on-ones to understand and support team members.
00:11:54 — Key psychological principles: Avoiding pain and short-term bias — Two fundamental principles are explained: people do more to avoid pain than to gain pleasure, and the short-term feels more real than the long-term. These principles explain common behaviors like procrastination and avoiding difficult conversations. The key to change is to reframe by making the long-term consequences (more pain from inaction) or benefits (pleasure of completion) feel more immediate.
00:29:01 — Top challenges for engineering leaders: Loneliness and conflict — Versteeg shares that peer groups formed from his own feeling of loneliness as a CPTO. He reveals that the biggest challenges discussed in CTO groups are not technical but people-related, with conflict management being paramount. He notes that while avoiding conflict is a good strategy for individual contributors, leaders must learn to navigate it.
00:31:31 — A model for delivering bad news and difficult feedback — Versteeg provides a concrete, respectful model for difficult conversations: 1) Deliver the bad news directly within the first 10 seconds. 2) Separate the issue from the person (explain reasons). 3) Acknowledge the other person’s feelings. 4) Suggest pausing the conversation to allow for emotional processing. This approach respects the recipient while preventing drawn-out, stressful discussions.
00:41:55 — Letting go of technical work: The vanilla orchid metaphor — To illustrate the need for leaders to delegate, Versteeg shares the story of the vanilla orchid, which must drop its original ground roots to grow taller and form new aerial roots. He connects this to a founder CTO’s realization: “If only I can do it, I should not do it.” The instinct to do it yourself for speed is a short-term lie that creates long-term bottlenecks.
00:47:36 — Developing a product mindset beyond requirements — Versteeg argues that focusing solely on unclear requirements is a red flag, leading to a “feature factory.” Tech leaders and ICs should seek to understand the “why” behind a feature. He shares an example where a developer, understanding the core user problem (easily listing items for sale), prototyped an image recognition solution over a weekend, creating massive value because they looked beyond the ticket.
00:53:40 — The risks of AI and the need for digital hygiene — Expressing concern about the rapid adoption of LLMs, Versteeg warns of a lack of “digital hygiene.” He cites research suggesting LLM use can induce psychosis in healthy adults by creating reinforcing feedback loops where users bond with and uncritically accept outputs from an always-agreeable entity. He calls for guardrails, comparing this period to the early, polluting days of industrialization.
01:09:26 — Three pieces of technical leadership wisdom — Versteeg concludes with three key pieces of advice: 1) “In order to speed up, you sometimes need to slow down”—protect time for reflection. 2) “Knowledge uninvested in action is useless”—if something resonates, try it. 3) “Learn to speak business”—if it’s not interesting, you likely don’t know enough about it. He underscores the second point with a personal story about weight loss, highlighting that people often seek a magic formula instead of acting on known principles.

Episode Info

Podcast: Tech Lead Journal
Author: Henry Suryawirawan
Category: Technology
Published: 2026-02-23T12:00:00Z
Duration: 01:14:42

References

URL PocketCasts: https://pocketcasts.com/podcast/tech-lead-journal/952099f0-a7bc-0138-e686-0acc26574db2/stop-telling-yourself-youre-bad-at-people-stuff/67796658-534a-4497-88bf-2b53911c51ae
Episode UUID: 67796658-534a-4497-88bf-2b53911c51ae

Podcast Info

Name: Tech Lead Journal
Type: episodic
Site: https://techleadjournal.dev
UUID: 952099f0-a7bc-0138-e686-0acc26574db2

Transcript

[00:00:00] I see a lot of people that become a tech lead, they have this old belief that I’m just not that

[00:00:04] good at the people stuff. Let me focus on the tech and the details, but it’s a little bit of a lie.

[00:00:08] Today’s guest is Martijn Versteeg, founder of Group Effort. With a background in organizational

[00:00:13] psychology, he’s built a community of 300 plus CTOs and engineering leaders, teaching them the

[00:00:18] systems behind human behavior. Many people assume that dealing with people is hard. So tell us more

[00:00:23] about learning from these systems. Actually, the way of doing every psychology thing, they all have

[00:00:28] systems. As a tech lead, you were already good at using systems. I will tell you there is a stack

[00:00:33] overflow of psychology and how you can access it. You also have peer coaching groups with other

[00:00:38] engineering leaders. Maybe tell us top challenges that engineering leaders are facing. Interestingly

[00:00:43] enough, I was expecting the CTO groups to be extremely technical, but it’s all about people.

[00:00:47] Conflict management, always kind of like the top challenges, especially if you’re new to

[00:00:51] management, right? Before you are a leader, it’s a pretty good tactic not to get into conflict. But

[00:00:57] this is one of these transformations.

[00:00:58] We have to go through. Here’s the one for bad news. Within 10 seconds, bad news out. If you just

[00:01:02] skip around the topic, the other person, their bullshit detectors are already bing, bing, bing,

[00:01:06] bing, bing, bing. Then separate it from the person as much as you can. One other challenge that I find

[00:01:11] most of the tech leaders cannot let go. Nobody will be quicker if I just do it. If you ever catch

[00:01:16] yourself thinking that, no, it’s always a lie. I had a founder of CTO who was struggling with this

[00:01:20] very much. And at one point he just saw I’m the bottleneck. So his quote was also amazing. And that

[00:01:25] was, if only I can do it, I should not do it.

[00:01:28] Hey, quick pause. My goal with Tech Lead Journal is simple. Learn from the best in tech so we can

[00:01:50] all grow together. If this resonates with you, hit subscribe to follow the channel. It’s the

[00:01:55] biggest way for you to support the show and help us keep bringing great guests to the show.

[00:01:58] And insights to you. Thanks for being here. And let’s get back to it.

[00:02:28] How engineering leader can become a much better leader, putting aside not just the technical

[00:02:34] aspects, but also the product aspects so that they can grow the organization, they can grow the team

[00:02:40] and they can grow themselves much better. So Martin, thank you so much for your time. Welcome

[00:02:45] to the show. Thank you so much. I look forward to this a lot because I think leadership in tech,

[00:02:52] it can make such an impact on a company. So I love how you’re doing this. What I’ve listened,

[00:02:58] it’s both useful for aspiring leaders and for people who are in the business long time. So

[00:03:02] congrats on that. And I can’t wait to see if I can contribute. Yeah, looking forward for this

[00:03:07] conversation as well. So Martin, maybe if you if you know, right, so I always love to invite my

[00:03:12] guests first to share a little bit more about yourself, specifically by sharing career turning

[00:03:17] points that you think we can learn from you. Yes. I prepared this question. And I decided

[00:03:25] that the best answer to the turning points

[00:03:28] is that I prefer to name none. But I will give an intro. And I will tell you exactly why. Because

[00:03:37] what I found is specifically in tech leaders, there is always this need for more knowledge,

[00:03:45] more knowledge, more knowledge. But then sometimes we make things so big, just like a ticket gets too

[00:03:50] big, that we kind of don’t stop go into action. So one of the things that I found was if I name a

[00:03:56] career turning point,

[00:03:58] that I was head coach of Singapore rowing team in 2020 13, you might think, but I haven’t been

[00:04:05] that so this is not relevant to me. Or if I say a turning point is when I started multiple peer

[00:04:12] groups across Europe, you might think but I haven’t done that. So maybe this doesn’t apply to

[00:04:16] me. So I would say one lesson that I think is super relevant is in code, you guys are great at

[00:04:24] this, you already know, it’s all about iteration and small steps.

[00:04:28] And you do the same for your personal growth. So I will give you my two minute intro. But I don’t

[00:04:33] think it’s about one point that made the difference. For me, it was all the steps that made the journey

[00:04:38] happen. This is quite unique. Yeah, yeah, this is quite unique sharing. So I love the way that

[00:04:44] you mentioned, in life, it’s all about small step is about iteration, right? So yeah, sometimes the

[00:04:49] big career turning points or turning points achievements that people see that we see from

[00:04:53] people out there, right? It’s actually, it’s kind of like culmination result of hard work,

[00:04:58] effort, and a lot of experiments that they did along the way. So I think thanks for sharing that

[00:05:03] perspective. And for reminding us about this importance of you know, finding your own ways,

[00:05:08] your own career turning points. Yeah. So I would be happy to still give an intro, right? Because I

[00:05:14] don’t want to remain a stranger. Shall I do that? Is that okay? Yeah, yeah. Okay, so my background

[00:05:20] is in organizational psychology, combined with computer science as a minor. So I’m in between

[00:05:28] the people stuff and the tech stuff. Don’t ask me to review your code. But I’m very happy to have

[00:05:35] an in depth discussion, whether that is about hallucinations of an LLM, or whether it’s about

[00:05:40] what vectors to use in your recommender model in data science, I like the tech, I can go along

[00:05:46] quite far, but I’m not writing or reading code. I’ve been described by other people like your

[00:05:52] listeners as over time. Yeah, he speaks nerd, but he doesn’t read or write it.

[00:05:58] Which I think is what you can expect from me. And this is also what I hope to contribute because

[00:06:03] I’ve I’ve led multiple technology organizations. And I find that the value I can bring is on the

[00:06:09] psychology side. And the problem that is also there. And that’s why I’m super excited to be

[00:06:14] here. Because I see a lot of people that become a tech lead to have this old belief that I’m just

[00:06:20] not that good at the people stuff. Let me focus on the tech and the and the details. But it’s a

[00:06:25] little bit of a lie. Because there is

[00:06:28] actually the way of doing every psychology thing people think right, they all have systems.

[00:06:34] As a tech lead, whether you’re still aspiring or already that for a long time, you were already

[00:06:39] good at using systems. So I hope that in this talk with Henry, we can talk about systems systems for

[00:06:46] talking for handling conflict, I will tell you, there’s a stack overflow of psychology and how

[00:06:53] you can access it. And I’ll try to get you other insights that you can actually use. That’s my

[00:06:57] core goal.

[00:06:58] Henry Suryawirawan So let’s try to take it from there.

[00:07:00] Henry Suryawirawan Yeah. Well, I like that your

[00:07:03] background is actually an organization psychologist, right? So because a lot of things we can learn from

[00:07:09] psychology that can be applied to organization, team building, right, and also leadership. And

[00:07:14] specifically, just now, you mentioned something that I find very interesting, because so many

[00:07:18] tech leaders, you know, tech practitioners out there, they actually aspire to become a much

[00:07:24] better person, a much better tech leaders, maybe growing into a more, you know, more successful,

[00:07:28] you know, more successful, you know, more successful, you know, more successful, you know, more successful,

[00:07:28] more successful, you know, more successful, you know, more successful, you know, more successful, you know, more

[00:07:28] engineering leaders kind of a position, but they somehow feel stuck, maybe in their mindset in

[00:07:35] terms of opportunity or in terms of knowledge. So let’s dive deep here first. Because you mentioned

[00:07:41] that this can be learned. There’s a system that everyone can find and learn from them from from

[00:07:48] those resources and become better, right. But I think many people assume that dealing with people

[00:07:52] is hard, dealing with people is abstract, ambiguous. So tell us more about this learning from these systems.

[00:07:58] let’s do this. So first of all, I’ll finish my background because I didn’t do that because I

[00:08:04] want so much to give value that I sometimes don’t shine the spotlight on myself. I had my own

[00:08:08] education technology startup, scaled it up, sold it after five years. Then I started doing groups

[00:08:15] for tech and product leaders. It started as a group for myself because I felt like, why am I

[00:08:20] the only one figuring it out? Which ties perfect into the question that I’m going to answer that

[00:08:24] Henry just asked. And I also find that after those groups, it was working so great that it

[00:08:31] became kind of a community. So currently I’m working with, well, let’s say 300 product and

[00:08:35] tech leaders across Europe. Some of them in conferences, some of them in training, some of

[00:08:40] them in peer groups, and even some one-on-one coaching, which is very limited now. There,

[00:08:47] I teach these systems. So one of the systems I want to talk about is there’s actually

[00:08:54] a

[00:08:54] pretty good predictor of human behavior and I can summarize it in three minutes. If you’re okay with

[00:09:00] this, there is only a certain amount of needs and this transcends culture. There’s a couple of needs

[00:09:07] that every person has. And those needs are, I’ll tell them one by one. One is people like to know

[00:09:15] what’s going to happen next. You could call it certainty. You could call it stability. I’ll

[00:09:20] provide a link to a, to a written out version. Then if people know what’s going to happen next,

[00:09:24] what happens if that’s the only thing they have, you’ll get bored. So we also have a certain need

[00:09:30] for variety. Then thirdly, if we get variety and stability, right, we also all want to grow or at

[00:09:38] least perceive we’re growing. I’m assuming that you’re listening to this podcast to find something.

[00:09:42] And I’m assuming even for Henry, part of this might be, I want to keep growing. So I’ll just

[00:09:46] interview people. So that’s growth. After growth, you have status. It is interestingly enough for

[00:09:53] everyone in the world. It’s not just me. It’s not just me. It’s not just me. It’s not just me. It’s not just

[00:09:54] a common thing. We like to have a certain amount of status. Some of us are humble and feel pretty

[00:09:59] okay with a status that is not like that fits, that fits in an, in a normal size room. So I’m

[00:10:05] like Elon needs so much that other people think you were pretty crazy. Um, but it’s a need.

[00:10:11] And then there is the need for connection. We want to relate to others. And the last need is

[00:10:18] giving. That’s why it feels so good to teach a junior how to do code better. So all of these

[00:10:24] are steered by just two things. And I’m hoping to discuss this in depth after, but, but I just

[00:10:28] wanted to give the whole model. It’s a subjective scale. It is a model. I can get more stability and

[00:10:37] less stability, but my experience could be rated from a zero to a 10 thing is even if Henry and me

[00:10:45] compare, maybe my 10 is Henry’s five or the other way around. So this model works when you

[00:10:54] ask the perspective of the person you’re testing this with, you can ask, where are you? What is your

[00:10:59] current experience? How stable do you feel? How much variety do you experience? How much growth,

[00:11:04] how much status, how much connection, how much giving I found this, I started using this very

[00:11:11] intensively around COVID when I was an agile coach for a company that just said, keep our people.

[00:11:16] That’s the most important, take care of my people. And we use this and it was a pretty good predictor.

[00:11:21] If three of these went to a five,

[00:11:24] four or lower people started looking for a job. So this is a model that explains most every

[00:11:29] behavior. And I would say your experience of one of these needs going down, you could call that

[00:11:35] very, very simplified pain, all negative feelings. That is it’s going back. If it’s going up,

[00:11:42] that feels like pleasure, meaning all positive emotions. Now, three more things. And I,

[00:11:48] and you have a pretty grasp of, of, uh, of basic, uh, behavior for humans. One,

[00:11:54] we do more to avoid pain than to gain pleasure. Sometimes we want to read, right? There’s there’s,

[00:12:00] I have a bookcase to my right. There’s, there’s a lot of people that buy these books

[00:12:04] and then don’t read them, right? Because the pain of taking the time to read it

[00:12:10] is more real to us than the pleasure of getting the book done. That’s number one. Number two,

[00:12:17] short-term is more real to us than long-term. It’s so much easier to focus on what is at hand,

[00:12:23] whether that be,

[00:12:24] that one bug that you focus on, because you don’t want to have that strategic discussion at this

[00:12:28] moment, or whether it is you wanting to be in great shape, being able to run 10 marathons,

[00:12:34] congrats, Henry. Um, even if you say you want to have the body to run 10 marathons,

[00:12:41] it’s tempting to take the apple pie. Why? Because the apple pie of now is more real to us than the

[00:12:47] 42 kilometers a month or two months or three months from now, we do more to avoid pain than to gain,

[00:12:54] pleasure. And we have short-term is more real to us than long-term.

[00:12:59] Now this all together is a pretty good explanation of people’s behavior.

[00:13:05] So there is a system and I just wanted to give you this one. I’ll make sure there’s a written

[00:13:09] out one on my website, which we can link to in the show notes, but I just wanted to start there.

[00:13:13] And I hope Henry will, will try to break it for me because that’s the biggest honor you could do this.

[00:13:18] Well, thank you for sharing. I feel so many things that we can peel from these, uh, so-called, uh,

[00:13:23] so-called the concepts, right? Uh, how do you predict people’s behavior? How do you predict,

[00:13:28] you know, maybe the team dynamics, right. How people behave within organizations. So maybe

[00:13:33] let’s try to, you know, go one by one. So I think you mentioned about the, so-called five things,

[00:13:40] uh, that people kind of like crave. The first is like certainty. Yes. We kind of like want

[00:13:44] to know, uh, the future, maybe, maybe not so far ahead future, but at least tomorrow, next week,

[00:13:50] next year and so on and so forth then we want to have variety that’s why we all have different

[00:13:55] options different tools different frameworks different tech stack and all that we want to

[00:13:59] we want to learn from our craft our career not just doing the same thing we want a status at

[00:14:05] some point in time right maybe a career ladder maybe in your community whatever that is right

[00:14:11] or maybe social media these days you want to be feel connected with other people creating the

[00:14:17] networks and also giving at the end you know like servicing to others how does someone actually use

[00:14:22] this different like different needs i would say like different needs um human parts right how

[00:14:28] how does they use it in their i don’t know day-to-day life or career or even in leadership

[00:14:33] right so tell us more about this i love that you’re immediately asking me for the tactical

[00:14:38] so we have the knowledge now and that’s fantastic you can use this in two ways one you can self

[00:14:44] assess this because it will make it easier for

[00:14:47] yourself to do it and it will make it easier for you to do it and it will make it easier for

[00:14:47] yourself to understand your own behavior how do i currently experience stability is it terrible

[00:14:53] being one and awesome being 10 so you could do that but you can also do this when you are a tech

[00:14:59] lead for your deaths because it is actually a great question to ask it also gives them a one-on-one

[00:15:05] that is less like vague right why are we having this one-on-one about my feelings i just want to

[00:15:09] talk about code right but if you make it concrete i see most deaths even our friends that are that

[00:15:15] that are like

[00:15:17] hesitant to even accept any one-on-ones they like a system this has nice boxes right but you will

[00:15:23] get a pretty good indication and you’d be surprised what you learn and as a tech lead i think you

[00:15:28] should also focus on then looking at are there any low numbers i would say five or lower that

[00:15:34] would be something to work on on the growth of your people because you might have this amazing

[00:15:39] senior in your team right if they experience no more growth and that goes down and down and down

[00:15:47] you should better catch that before they start looking for a new job and i think that’s the two

[00:15:54] practical ways that i immediately uh recommend you do this pro tip you’re gonna get them numbers

[00:16:00] right if people struggle just tell them go with your gut feeling don’t worry about it being seven

[00:16:06] or an eight because that’s still closer together than a two and an eight it’s about direction

[00:16:11] pro tip number two you can ask about trends so you can say like okay it’s currently a five

[00:16:17] if we continue like this where will this be like ask people to project in the future because that’s

[00:16:21] super useful and number three if you have low numbers instead of assuming what your 10 is is

[00:16:28] also then their 10 ask them what does a 10 on growth or a 10 on status look like for you and

[00:16:36] i will guarantee this will immediately yield you something to improve your team and it will keep

[00:16:41] more people in your team definitely but it will also deepen that

[00:16:45] sense of

[00:16:46] we are building something great together yeah and i think you mentioned about one-on-one right i

[00:16:52] think this is one maybe tool that you can use to actually create a conversation build conversations

[00:16:57] and even like build connections with that person itself right so i think one thing that i think

[00:17:03] i assume right so this is not to maximize all the needs for individuals right again like you

[00:17:08] mentioned about subjectivity uh different people have different priorities or different needs

[00:17:13] and there’s a spectrum right so your 10

[00:17:16] cannot be my turn and vice versa right so this is something that not for everyone to maximize all

[00:17:22] of them but uh depending on the situation and depending on the subjective preference uh this

[00:17:27] could be different so how does this differ with i don’t know something else what i know is about

[00:17:32] maslow’s hierarchy of needs right that is commonly used for assessing human needs

[00:17:37] yeah so maslow starts with safety right so actually start with physical needs and then safety

[00:17:44] i’m assuming that in your work those two Sport parameters which are goal more importantly are

[00:17:45] going to crec and bad but you’re not going to be left alone with all this for the future up to now

[00:17:45] where would york be seeing between arriver to down see diffic climbs battery and why maybe vada but

[00:17:46] i mean i feel like york is이 is something i think is going to be in the future our� but we’re 통zhou about

[00:17:46] two are no longer relevant self-actualization is at the end one of the critiques so this is perfect

[00:17:53] that you notice by the way for everyone there’s a pyramid maslow’s pyramid we’ll probably also

[00:17:57] refer that i if you need a picture i i have those from training slides but it says about first you

[00:18:03] need to take care of your physiological needs then you need to take care of your your security needs

[00:18:08] your your safety and it rolls up all the way to the top being self-actualization it’s a useful

[00:18:15] thing to think about humans that are in lack and where physical needs are a theme and where

[00:18:20] physical safety are a theme like it’s a more zoomed out picture of this because of course

[00:18:26] if you have a death that is just physically like in pain then maslow’s theory is more relevant it

[00:18:34] won’t necessarily come from each of these but it will show up still because it will show up

[00:18:39] instability being low probably so i say maslow is way more zoomed out it’s for

[00:18:44] higher

[00:18:45] level assessment in work we want to go for more personal needs and i think it’s a it’s a more

[00:18:50] zoomed in version and more practical just for the two tools i gave you and a third way of using it

[00:18:57] whenever you don’t understand behavior which can happen because everyone acts differently

[00:19:02] ask yourself what need is this serving and if you don’t know you can even ask because they’re like

[00:19:08] can i just if we categorize it which one of you these are you because sometimes why is this death

[00:19:14] going in conflict

[00:19:15] because for them there are some rules around connection which means you always need to be

[00:19:19] very straight or maybe it’s because for them i’m going into conflict because status is super

[00:19:25] important to me and the moment that you don’t listen to me i feel that status is decreasing

[00:19:29] i i challenge everyone who listens to this if you find a way to break it i’ll be very happy

[00:19:34] because i’ve been saying this for multiple years break it please because we can make it better

[00:19:38] but this is the most functional way i found to systemize human behavior in a short and concise

[00:19:44] way

[00:19:45] just try it if you like it try it

[00:19:48] in a way it’s kind of like a like a dictionary right so you know in psychology there are so

[00:19:54] many different models and frameworks right not just about you know these human needs but also

[00:19:58] like people’s characteristics you know i know something called intj and all that i don’t know

[00:20:04] what it’s called the framework uh also like red blue green those kind of stuff yeah this is a

[00:20:10] perfect thank you i’m so grateful that you brought that up internal validity of most

[00:20:15] commercially available sorry i also go slow on this the internal validity of most commercially

[00:20:20] marketed personality tools stuck can i say that it’s like the ones that you named the first one

[00:20:29] is called the myers-briggs type indicator while some people swear by it if you look at the internal

[00:20:35] validity it’s built on some concepts by carl jung and there’s some jung fans out there still

[00:20:41] but they don’t hold to be true if you

[00:20:45] try to pick them apart with the scientific method they’re not stable enough over time

[00:20:49] the other one you mentioned the colors there’s a lot of popular ones but one for example is disc

[00:20:54] there is no scientific data on that being stable over time people have different roles in different

[00:21:03] groups we already know that but there’s another problem with this if you put a sticker on someone

[00:21:09] you also give them a way to say this is just how i am i cannot do this because i am blue

[00:21:15] and like there’s a lot of moments where where labels are super relevant right i mean everyone

[00:21:20] likes their code to be neat and you want to know what this piece does please right because how are

[00:21:25] you going to test it otherwise but for people we have this thing that whenever we are labeled we

[00:21:31] tend to also change our behavior yeah i think that somehow uh feels true so especially if something

[00:21:37] that doesn’t really resonate with your i don’t know like your value your habit your background

[00:21:41] culture and all that right so i think uh yeah all models it’s going to be a little bit different but

[00:21:45] it’s good for us to be aware of maybe use it for our advantage but one thing for sure like not

[00:21:51] and like i don’t think all of them is 100 accurate um so i think it depends on how you use it and what

[00:21:58] kind of purpose and i think one critical aspect that this is also i learned from my experience

[00:22:02] it’s not good for leaders to use this to compartmentalize people or to you put labels on

[00:22:08] people and think assume that they won’t change because what i understand at least for me as

[00:22:12] well i tend to change over time depending on the people who are in the group what they’re doing what

[00:22:15] the again like experience situations new knowledge that comes in and all that so thanks for highlighting

[00:22:20] that the beauty of what you just said is that’s why i don’t believe in personality labeling because

[00:22:27] personality that assumes that personality is stable over time which if you zoom out to a big

[00:22:33] enough population is true because most people don’t change but i think if you’re listening to

[00:22:38] a podcast you are already looking for growth right maybe you’ll even try one or two of the

[00:22:44] things that you learned which makes you top one percent but for those people it’s even less

[00:22:49] efficient and it can definitely hold you back and i want to just because it was so close to what you

[00:22:55] were saying when people ask me like can you summarize your psychology study i always say

[00:23:00] with humans a model is better than no model but no model is perfect i just wanted to get that

[00:23:07] sorry continue my back this kind of like reminds me of this uh phrase the map is not the territory

[00:23:13] or something like that

[00:23:14] right where you you can have the model but it’s not the actual depiction of the actual situation

[00:23:19] yeah so yeah one thing that i find very interesting you mentioned about this which i uh relate very

[00:23:25] closely with personal growth right you mentioned people want to avoid pain as much as you know

[00:23:31] seeking more pleasure that’s the first thing and the second one is the short term is something that

[00:23:36] is more prioritized for people rather than the long term so i find these are very good indicators

[00:23:44] for people who are trying to improve themselves in order for them to grow right so tell us how do

[00:23:48] you use these two psychological insights i would say maybe uh for people to actually you know improve

[00:23:55] themselves good so you can actually manipulate or change manipulate sounds like you’re doing

[00:24:02] something negative but you can change what you personally i’m now starting with yourself by the

[00:24:07] way you can change what you relate to something let’s start with the short term versus long term

[00:24:14] the way you change that is to show your brain which is just a survival mechanism so it’s just

[00:24:19] set on the now to survive if you look like very primal that’s how it how it works in coaching for

[00:24:25] example i would just pull the future to the now because our brain is a beautiful viewing screen

[00:24:31] we have a fantasy and even if you’re saying i’m super logical i don’t have well close your eyes

[00:24:36] and what is my skin color how do you know right it is something you can remember it is what our

[00:24:42] brain does what is your brain doing what is your brain doing what is your brain doing what is your

[00:24:44] brain doing what is your brain doing what is what your brain doing what does it have we could

[00:25:03] try to do different things more and and say hey if you’re the light of the way if you could

[00:25:08] break through the three ecosystems and make things better then yes i can tell you anything and all i

[00:25:13] could do is act as steering the opposite direction i could do this and that and i could tell you

[00:25:14] what would happen in 20 and the strange thing is it’s the emotion that is there that will change

[00:25:20] your mind on this so you can do this for yourself if you have behaviors you haven’t been able to

[00:25:24] change like for example i know a lot of tech leads are i’m just super stressed out about bad

[00:25:30] news conversations telling my dev that they’re not good enough or telling them no when they ask

[00:25:35] for a raise so i’d rather just escalate it one level up right this is a very common theme for

[00:25:40] i see recognition um what you could then change for yourself is you can reframe and you can first

[00:25:48] ask like why is this painful but you can also so the conversation itself is short-term pain right

[00:25:55] oh no i need to do something that’s uncomfortable to another person it feels like almost for some

[00:25:58] people it feels like you’re stabbing them right but if you go long term say if i don’t say this

[00:26:06] now to this person what am i taking away from them

[00:26:09] you

[00:26:10] so not what i’m taking away now but what am i taking away long term

[00:26:12] and i’m not saying be indelicate right but if a developer is underperforming in any front

[00:26:20] not saying it in the long term will provide the whole universe with more pain

[00:26:25] that person you everyone will get more pain in the long run so sometimes it’s just a matter of

[00:26:32] you change your mind by asking what does this mean long term and the safe thing about that

[00:26:37] question is it’s still you answering it so you’re not

[00:26:39] you’re not answering it so you’re not answering it so you’re not answering it so you’re not

[00:26:40] even if you ask this of a person it’s their future so i feel very safe let’s say someone

[00:26:47] else comes to me and and they say like oh i have a hard time changing this if i ask like what happens

[00:26:52] long term i’m not steering them their behavior right i’m not telling them this is how you need

[00:26:57] to change your behavior i’m just helping them make the long term more real and i think this

[00:27:02] is another one is procrastination right procrastination it’s just the doing the work

[00:27:08] is more painful to us and i think it’s a very important thing to do and i think it’s a very

[00:27:10] important thing to do and i think it’s a very important thing to do and i think it’s a very

[00:27:10] They’re not doing the work.

[00:27:12] And at one point it reverses if you have a deadline, right?

[00:27:15] That is like, I’m going to do it now.

[00:27:16] And then like two hours before deadline, you go crazy and you do it.

[00:27:21] That’s another one of these.

[00:27:22] You could ask for yourself, like, what would be the pleasure of actually doing it now?

[00:27:28] What is the pain that I might not get if I do it now?

[00:27:31] The last minute stress.

[00:27:33] So I think oftentimes the questions, and I’ll note a couple down as well, because I don’t

[00:27:37] want people to feel they have to remember everything now.

[00:27:39] But there’s like four or five questions you can use to like, it’s almost like zooming

[00:27:45] out of behavior.

[00:27:47] And the beauty of this, what I like about it is it’s always the person with behavior

[00:27:53] making the choice.

[00:27:54] It’s never you dictating what someone else should do, because I think that’s giving advice

[00:27:59] and that’s not always the way to go, specifically when it’s about personal behavior.

[00:28:05] So yeah, I hope that was a useful answer.

[00:28:08] Yeah, definitely.

[00:28:09] So I think.

[00:28:09] It’s all about reframing.

[00:28:11] How do you see, you know, pain versus pleasure, short term versus long term.

[00:28:15] And obviously for you to grow, right, you always have to look at from the long term

[00:28:19] perspective and also for, you know, growing yourself, right?

[00:28:23] It’s not just to just to avoid pain, because by avoiding pain doesn’t mean you will grow

[00:28:27] necessarily, in my opinion.

[00:28:30] So using all these tools, I think tech leaders now have a certain psychological behavioral

[00:28:36] aspects that they can use.

[00:28:38] You also have this peer.

[00:28:39] So if you’re in a peer group, if you’re coaching groups with other engineering leaders, maybe

[00:28:43] tell us maybe top problems or top challenges that, you know, engineering leaders are facing

[00:28:48] in their career or in their day-to-day life that you can share with us so that we can

[00:28:53] also learn from that.

[00:28:54] 100%.

[00:28:55] So the peer groups came from me personally being a CPTO and feeling a little lonely at

[00:29:01] the top, right?

[00:29:02] At the top.

[00:29:03] I’m not taking myself too serious.

[00:29:04] I hope you feel that through my voice already.

[00:29:07] But what I discovered was.

[00:29:09] You know, there’s actually other people that have this job as well.

[00:29:12] Why don’t I go looking for them?

[00:29:13] And I formed this group.

[00:29:15] We call it the peer group.

[00:29:16] You could have also called it a mastermind.

[00:29:18] And the goal was, let’s just provide multiple perspectives on our challenges.

[00:29:25] And that’s the context which sparked the whole thing of it’s become a whole community.

[00:29:30] We have like WhatsApp group format.

[00:29:33] We have live meetings from et cetera, et cetera.

[00:29:35] And in that we discuss real challenges.

[00:29:38] And sometimes they’re super practical, right?

[00:29:40] So I literally was like in meetings like that where we discussed, okay, ransomware happened.

[00:29:48] What actually do we do now?

[00:29:49] Right?

[00:29:50] So it could be as practical and detailed as that.

[00:29:53] It could be knowledge things, which is basically, Hey, what do you guys pay a senior developer

[00:29:57] just checking.

[00:29:59] But what I see as the bigger challenges, interestingly enough, I was expecting the CTO groups to

[00:30:05] that be to, to be extremely technical.

[00:30:08] But it’s all about people.

[00:30:11] And if you were to blindfold me and put me in a group or just read only the transcripts

[00:30:16] without the names, I would have a hard time telling apart a group of heads of engineering

[00:30:23] from a group of heads of finance, which is very, I mean, the language will be slightly

[00:30:28] different, but the themes, if you just abstracted to the themes, one of the biggest things is

[00:30:35] I’m conflict averse.

[00:30:36] Okay.

[00:30:37] But before you are a leader, it’s pretty good tactic not to get into conflict.

[00:30:45] It’s a solid tactic.

[00:30:46] Like if an individual contributor asks me like, how often should I look for conflict?

[00:30:51] I’d be like, no, just do what your boss says.

[00:30:53] It’s a really good strategy, but this is one of these transformations we have to go through.

[00:30:58] And as a leader, this topic comes up often and I’ll give you the following on that.

[00:31:04] Often we make a conflict huge in our mind.

[00:31:06] And I challenge you to like peek beyond the door, really ask yourself, what is the worst

[00:31:14] that can happen?

[00:31:15] Because oftentimes that’s already a part of the remedy.

[00:31:18] Maybe that conflict isn’t actually as hard as you thought.

[00:31:22] And if it is something else, maybe the conflict you’re averting is a bad news conversation,

[00:31:27] either with a peer or somebody in your team, find a model.

[00:31:31] So I, there is a concept called modeling, which I call.

[00:31:36] That’s like the stack overflow of psychology.

[00:31:39] You can find people who are great at this.

[00:31:42] And with the disclaimer that we just talked about that no model is perfect.

[00:31:46] There are models out there.

[00:31:47] And if you’re learning, it’s perfectly okay to just copy a model.

[00:31:51] And here’s the one for bad news, by the way, within 10 seconds, bad news out, right?

[00:31:56] If it is just to be very direct, you asked for a raise.

[00:32:01] We cannot provide it right now, right?

[00:32:04] All the stuff that I do before.

[00:32:05] That.

[00:32:06] It’s actually unfair.

[00:32:08] You’re getting a raise, but, but I would say like, this is the part you need to immediately

[00:32:14] go with the bad news.

[00:32:16] Hey, we’re going to cut down.

[00:32:18] You are one of the people that’s going to be asked to leave the team because then there’s

[00:32:23] no walking around.

[00:32:24] And if you don’t do this, if you, if you just skip around the topic, you’re going to get

[00:32:30] way more stressed yourself.

[00:32:31] But the other person, their bullshit detectors are already bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing,

[00:32:35] because people are really great.

[00:32:37] You’ve been maybe in this situation yourself where you’re not like, I know this is not

[00:32:40] what this is about.

[00:32:41] Just get to the real stuff.

[00:32:42] Right?

[00:32:43] We noticed from our families, from our private life, right?

[00:32:47] So my recipe is bad news out 10 seconds then separate it from the person as much as you

[00:32:53] can.

[00:32:54] So I would say like, we cannot give a raise right now.

[00:32:58] Here’s reason a, b and c, then you give, I understand that this would provide feelings

[00:33:05] on your part right so make a space for feelings be like i can understand this is not fun to hear

[00:33:10] or whatever the words are that you usually use don’t copy me exactly but just say like

[00:33:15] i understand this is not what you wanted to hear this is not fun maybe if the language you use is

[00:33:20] more more this sucks you you say that but just then give some space for emotion and then say

[00:33:28] i understand there might be a need to discuss this but i suggest we keep it at this for now

[00:33:34] so we both get to sleep on it for a night because then you give people the space for

[00:33:39] their emotion not with you per se otherwise you’re going to end up in endless discussions and loops

[00:33:43] so this is the model that i’ve i’ve seen most people like oh we’re tiny let’s take i get

[00:33:48] emails on this model so please if it works for you it’s just keeping it really short

[00:33:52] because there’s now it’s it’s it’s one it’s respectful but two it’s also not as personal

[00:33:59] right it’s not like you suck it is just this is the decision this is the reasons

[00:34:04] if you can pull it away from that person right if it’s like you’re not getting a raise because we

[00:34:09] are not making enough profit say that right you don’t need to be like if you can share that by

[00:34:15] the way of course be confidential with whatever is confidential with peers however and bosses

[00:34:20] there’s an extra step if you want to have frank conversations oftentimes it’s not this type but

[00:34:26] it can follow a similar format but it has to be preceded with asking permission same in every

[00:34:32] culture in my culture you would get away with it if you’re not getting a raise because you’re not

[00:34:34] getting a raise or the other way we like we dutch are very low power distance so we have no issue

[00:34:39] starting this conversation with our boss and also our boss expects it but as a global advice knowing

[00:34:44] that the audience is global there’s never anything wrong with asking permission like

[00:34:50] i would like to discuss something can you make the time is never wrong and if it’s no respected

[00:34:56] and you can still ask would there be time later but that’s that’s a disclaimer i would give for

[00:35:02] bosses because if you’re not getting a raise and you’re not getting a raise from the other person

[00:35:04] you’re not getting a raise from the other person you’re not getting a raise from the other person

[00:35:04] go bad news without asking permission i would consider that mutiny yeah well i think um that’s

[00:35:12] speaks truth to me as well right the people aspects and the conflict management always kind

[00:35:17] of like the top challenges especially if you’re new to this leadership management right managing

[00:35:22] people it’s always maybe one of the first few challenges that feels very very difficult because

[00:35:27] first unlike learning technologies right you can read so many things on the internet or maybe books

[00:35:33] you can find resources but dealing with these situations first yes there might be model out

[00:35:38] there but it’s very specifically contextual because different people is different different

[00:35:44] culture is different communication patterns and all that so i find that this is definitely one

[00:35:49] of the biggest challenges for leaders out there and thanks for giving us the tips about how do

[00:35:54] you do these difficult conversations right because yeah again some of us feel stressful if we have to

[00:35:59] convey these difficult conversations but for whatever reason sometimes

[00:36:03] we have to convey it right so be it for performance uh improvements be it for you know like tough

[00:36:09] situations in the economy organizations and all that so one thing that i want to peel a little

[00:36:14] bit more further right because this is always the first hurdle for tech leaders before they

[00:36:20] actually want to step up and be you know an engineering manager or maybe engineering leader

[00:36:25] so what steps concretely they could do in order to kind of like be able to navigate this

[00:36:33] they want to try giving it a go you know taking this step uh forward so you’re asking just to

[00:36:39] recap you’re asking if somebody’s aspiring how do you make those steps yeah how do you learn these

[00:36:46] people aspect and also conflict management right because like tech leaders we always work with code

[00:36:52] we always work with specifications and that’s about it kind of like less uh involved in those

[00:36:57] two aspects it’s a lot with what i would immediately say is

[00:37:03] you make a career step you look for extra responsibility and you ask if you can get that

[00:37:08] so it’s again a permission thing i’m pretty heavy on permission uh because i think that is very

[00:37:14] useful and also take the nose as okay but also not as permanent right i meet people who said like I

[00:37:22] would like to become an engineering leader and then they get a no and maybe they get some reasons

[00:37:27] and then they never ask ever again and i speak to them six years later and I would

[00:37:33] say if there is a no it’s almost always valid maybe not the right timing but it’s always valid

[00:37:39] to ask what are the reasons and work on that in a small way and maybe even ask that can I get a a

[00:37:46] little like help in growing this or can I get a little project where I can practice this so as

[00:37:54] long as you do that you can ask again give it a reasonable time you will feel out what it is but

[00:38:03] and the other part is all the people things it comes down to communication and I think that is

[00:38:11] not something you can learn from a book it’s something you do by practicing and one advice

[00:38:15] that I personally got recently from somebody that was coming in for my podcast he said

[00:38:23] if I could give people one action it was find the person that you have the hardest

[00:38:28] time connecting with in your company and go for a coffee

[00:38:33] with the intention to learn and listen not to push anything but that I think it’s a pretty wise

[00:38:39] advice if that relationship is totally broken of course right so don’t don’t overdo this you can do

[00:38:45] one little less right but I think going out of your bubble is great and I think as an aspiring

[00:38:51] tech leader the more you go outside the bubble of code it will be a very fun stretch for you but it

[00:39:01] will also improve the value because

[00:39:02] in the end you’re in a business there is sales there’s marketing and you might currently think

[00:39:07] I just like all of that my thing is I have found that most of the times when I dislike or I’m

[00:39:14] uninterested in something I don’t know enough about it so I’ll pull a book from my from my uh

[00:39:23] bookcase right now I thought molds and mushrooms were incredibly boring and then I read a whole

[00:39:30] book on it and it’s great

[00:39:32] it’s a fantastic world and I would say like developers know this rabbit hole concept right

[00:39:38] you go down a rabbit hole whether you’re a mod for a certain game a game right or whether you just

[00:39:46] went extremely deep into this obscure framework because it was somewhere in your old car you

[00:39:52] probably get more appreciation when you dive deeper I recommend you do it outside of tech

[00:39:57] as well and the first I would recommend you start is anything related to money

[00:40:02] and profit because in the end most everyone is working for a business there’s also people

[00:40:09] working for government there this is it works a little bit differently but that’s the fuel of

[00:40:15] that vehicle right so yes you are the one building the vehicle but realize that that’s the synergy

[00:40:22] between the two if the fuel runs out you could have built the best thing ever it’s still a problem

[00:40:29] or no bueno is a good summary

[00:40:32] right so yeah I think learning outside of tech is definitely very important right and communication

[00:40:39] so I think when you step up as a leader as a manager right you need to communicate you cannot

[00:40:43] just you know maybe chat only through you know slack or something like that you need to communicate

[00:40:48] you need to somehow make a sense of the situation maybe from people’s behavior habit communication

[00:40:54] patterns so all this you need to learn right you need to maybe pick up a book or go into peer group

[00:41:00] mastermind those kind of things

[00:41:02] I think like just to have interest in this kind of subject in this kind of knowledge so that you

[00:41:08] can get equipped once you step up on the role right one other challenge that I find most of

[00:41:15] the tech leaders because we come from like a very deep hands-on right we sometimes can be a very

[00:41:20] good IC but obviously stepping up as a leader as a manager we need to let other people be in

[00:41:27] the limelight so to speak right and this is also another challenge that I feel many people cannot

[00:41:32] they still feel itchy to I don’t know do the hands-on coding or be the person to decide on

[00:41:38] anything very important like architecture system design and all that so how do you

[00:41:43] advise people to start you know taking off this mindset

[00:41:49] I have a story because I take personally a lot of inspiration from nature first disclaimer about the

[00:41:55] story if you want to get a grade that communication people are always like Martin you have so many

[00:42:00] and you you you have you’re quite advanced in your use of language and levels of abstraction

[00:42:06] that i get from reading fiction actually not necessarily so people often focus i see a lot

[00:42:13] of people start focusing on the businessy sides right and i love those like a bookcase fool

[00:42:17] but the storytelling which is really relevant because somehow i’ll give you this as well

[00:42:23] in most businesses and most professional relationships logic is overused

[00:42:30] and emotion is underused and the thing is i haven’t seen logic change many people’s minds

[00:42:38] so that’s why with the with the how do you let go i will then answer with a story and it’s the

[00:42:46] story of the vanilla orchid a vanilla orchid starts as a seed and it falls very deeply

[00:42:53] onto the ground of the jungle there it sprouts it’s a viney plant and it uses its ground

[00:43:00] roots actually to crawl a little bit it’s really cool it finds a young jungle tree and it crawls up

[00:43:05] into the jungle tree and it like hitches a ride and it stretches and stretches and stretches and

[00:43:10] keeps its root roots that were so important in the soil but at one point it runs into a little

[00:43:16] thing called a scaling problem or actually physics because since it is a leafy plant

[00:43:21] it doesn’t have the physics to actually push up water high enough and the canopy of the leaves

[00:43:28] of the jungle are sometimes 30 meters high and the leaves of the jungle are sometimes 30 meters

[00:43:30] sometimes even 60 meters or i can’t believe it but that’s the that’s the real number

[00:43:34] so the orchid has a problem and it solves it in the most elegant way you can imagine

[00:43:40] it drops its ground roots it lets go and then it forms new aerial roots and to me that is the

[00:43:53] perfect descriptor of in order to grow you need to let things go and i know there was also something

[00:44:00] you might have heard about but i think it’s a very good description of how you can grow

[00:44:00] you might have been fishing for which i will also give you i had a founder cto who was struggling

[00:44:05] with this very much it was his baby right this was a founder he was deep into this code it was

[00:44:10] all his and at one point he just saw i’m the bottleneck i’m the bottleneck and know that if

[00:44:16] you’re not going to let things go you are going to become the bottleneck so his quote was also

[00:44:20] amazing and that was if only i can do it i should not do it pair program yes right teach yes but

[00:44:30] you cannot be the same you cannot be the same you cannot be the same you cannot be the same

[00:44:31] owner some people use that as a tactic right i’ve seen developers or maybe then they come

[00:44:36] to architect like i’m the only one who knows this old code so they can never let go of me

[00:44:40] but that will make you sour i will tell you that i think a lot of businesses and companies talk

[00:44:47] about value and i think it’s interesting how we never talk about virtue and i think for yourself

[00:44:52] the virtue is is what gives you like i have not seen a developer that used that strategy to become

[00:45:00] an essential part of the game so i think it’s a good idea to give people a chance to try to

[00:45:00] that didn’t turn sour in the end.

[00:45:04] It’s very interesting.

[00:45:06] Wow.

[00:45:07] Thank you for sharing

[00:45:08] such a very unique science knowledge, right?

[00:45:12] I didn’t know about the vanilla orchid, definitely.

[00:45:14] It’s cool, right?

[00:45:15] Yeah, yeah.

[00:45:16] But I think it’s kind of like very insightful

[00:45:18] because for it to grow to the next level, right,

[00:45:21] you need to let go

[00:45:21] one of the most important thing for itself, right,

[00:45:24] which is the root,

[00:45:25] how it grew in the first place, right?

[00:45:27] So I think,

[00:45:28] I feel this is the same thing

[00:45:29] for leaders out there, right?

[00:45:31] You cannot just be good in being an IC,

[00:45:34] writing the code,

[00:45:35] but you have to grow in some other aspects

[00:45:38] that, you know,

[00:45:38] where you can grow your roots as well, right?

[00:45:41] So I think that’s a very good,

[00:45:42] I don’t know, analogy from science.

[00:45:45] So I think that’s,

[00:45:46] thanks for sharing that.

[00:45:47] And about that story of the CTO,

[00:45:49] I think that phrasing

[00:45:50] is kind of like important as well, I find.

[00:45:53] So if only I can do it,

[00:45:55] I should not do it.

[00:45:55] I really love that.

[00:45:57] And I think for leaders out there

[00:45:58] who feels that

[00:45:59] you have too much to do,

[00:46:00] you are the bottleneck,

[00:46:01] you have too much knowledge in your head.

[00:46:04] I think this phrase can be

[00:46:05] kind of like a mantra for you

[00:46:06] to decide whether

[00:46:07] you should be the one doing it

[00:46:08] or it’s time for you to let go

[00:46:10] and teach other people.

[00:46:12] And there,

[00:46:14] your brain might immediately go,

[00:46:16] nobody will be quicker if I just do it.

[00:46:19] If you ever catch yourself thinking that,

[00:46:21] no, it’s always a lie.

[00:46:23] Because again,

[00:46:24] that’s the short-term brain

[00:46:25] circling all the way back, right?

[00:46:28] The short-term brain says,

[00:46:29] no, but I’ll do,

[00:46:30] I know how these permissions work.

[00:46:32] Let me just quickly, right?

[00:46:32] No, no.

[00:46:34] It’s the long-term solution.

[00:46:36] And if that takes a little bit more time now,

[00:46:39] it’s a huge yield.

[00:46:41] Yeah.

[00:46:41] And also kind of like avoiding pain

[00:46:43] of having to teach somebody,

[00:46:44] you know, from, you know,

[00:46:46] you know, spending the time and all that.

[00:46:48] So I think again,

[00:46:49] like these two psychological thing

[00:46:50] can be used in so many different scenarios,

[00:46:53] I feel.

[00:46:54] One other aspect that I feel

[00:46:57] tech leaders, engineering leaders,

[00:46:59] kind of like have the challenge

[00:47:00] is actually to put their product thinking mindset, right?

[00:47:04] Because they’re all into the tech,

[00:47:05] they’re all into the geeky aspect of,

[00:47:07] you know, building the code,

[00:47:08] building the systems, deploying it,

[00:47:10] how fantastic the, you know,

[00:47:12] the tech stack and all that.

[00:47:13] But actually product thinking mindset

[00:47:15] is actually equally important,

[00:47:17] if not more important these days,

[00:47:18] because I can see so many people

[00:47:20] already start thinking about CPTO, CTPO,

[00:47:23] you know, not just having T technology itself,

[00:47:26] but actually having the product together as well.

[00:47:28] So tell us,

[00:47:29] about this challenge,

[00:47:30] what do you see in your peer group

[00:47:31] and how can someone improve?

[00:47:34] So everyone will recognize,

[00:47:36] but the requirements weren’t clear enough, right?

[00:47:40] That to me is like a red flag,

[00:47:44] like not even yellow, red,

[00:47:45] because that means that you are focusing on features.

[00:47:48] And in product,

[00:47:49] we talk about this thing called a feature factory.

[00:47:52] What I think is the moment that you are focusing on requirements,

[00:47:57] you have a big problem because

[00:47:59] it doesn’t matter how fantastic your,

[00:48:02] what should we call it?

[00:48:03] PBI or product backlog item or feature,

[00:48:08] or what is it called in the other ticket

[00:48:10] or whatever system you use.

[00:48:13] It will always be a representation of something bigger.

[00:48:17] Like let’s talk about documentation for a second.

[00:48:20] Documentation is like a holiday picture of someone else.

[00:48:24] So let’s say I now pull up my photos app

[00:48:28] and show Henry a picture of me.

[00:48:29] And I’m like,

[00:48:29] I’m going to show him a random holiday picture

[00:48:30] and just say like,

[00:48:32] now go have fun in Valencia and do exactly that.

[00:48:36] He’ll be like,

[00:48:36] what?

[00:48:37] I don’t understand.

[00:48:39] But the documentation is not there to show you everything.

[00:48:44] I understand that you feel,

[00:48:45] no, but I need to produce as much as possible.

[00:48:47] So I’ll focus on what is given to me.

[00:48:49] If you want to be excellent,

[00:48:51] you figure out what this holiday picture is about.

[00:48:55] So the product mindset that you can also have as a tech person,

[00:48:58] even an IC is to understand why,

[00:49:02] why are we doing this?

[00:49:04] Because it is also you that is able to innovate better than anyone else

[00:49:10] because you’re so close to the tech.

[00:49:12] It is your downfall.

[00:49:14] If you focus only on that,

[00:49:15] it is your biggest gift.

[00:49:17] If you leverage it,

[00:49:19] I’ve heard a story,

[00:49:20] which is beautiful here in the Netherlands.

[00:49:22] We have a marketplace for secondhand stuff.

[00:49:24] Let’s call it the Dutch crags list

[00:49:26] because most people from pop culture are familiar with crags.

[00:49:29] This is the Dutch crags list.

[00:49:30] There was a head of product working there.

[00:49:34] And he actually took the time to investigate what is the real problem we’re

[00:49:39] solving here?

[00:49:40] Because if you’re listening to users,

[00:49:42] they’ll say your filter suck.

[00:49:43] And before you know it,

[00:49:44] you have 20,000 tickets on better filters,

[00:49:47] right?

[00:49:48] But he was talking to users really smart by the way.

[00:49:50] And he figured out,

[00:49:51] he said,

[00:49:51] no,

[00:49:52] the actual thing is I have a thing in my hand and I want to sell it.

[00:49:57] And he made this vision,

[00:49:58] type like an animated thing of a concept.

[00:50:01] This was way before like any AI,

[00:50:04] et cetera,

[00:50:04] like computer vision was just starting to be a thing.

[00:50:07] And he made this concept animation of what if a customer could just point

[00:50:12] their phone and it would immediately recognize it.

[00:50:15] And then that would be listed automatically taking away all the pain for the

[00:50:20] customer to have to type and find the right category and blah,

[00:50:23] blah,

[00:50:24] all the requirements,

[00:50:25] unclear stuff.

[00:50:27] When they showed that to the,

[00:50:28] the devs got it.

[00:50:31] And one of them over the weekend with a new computer

[00:50:34] vision tool said something like this.

[00:50:36] And there was a pretty solid recognition thing just running because no

[00:50:41] one in the rest of the company knew this was technically possible.

[00:50:45] You might know.

[00:50:46] So I challenge you if you really want to also,

[00:50:49] and this is super enjoyable,

[00:50:50] right?

[00:50:51] Because you are then not no longer a ticket producer,

[00:50:54] right?

[00:50:54] But you’re becoming a value adder.

[00:50:56] And I think that’s,

[00:50:58] it’s incredible.

[00:50:58] Cool.

[00:50:59] So I would also ask it more importantly,

[00:51:02] of course,

[00:51:03] the details are important and specifications are relevant,

[00:51:06] but I think if we go all the way back to the

[00:51:08] concept of the agile manifesto,

[00:51:11] by the way,

[00:51:12] if you’re doing scrum,

[00:51:12] but you haven’t visited the website of the agile manifesto,

[00:51:16] I’m surprised how often I find that just go to agile manifesto.org.

[00:51:20] It says working solutions over comprehensive documentation.

[00:51:25] That part,

[00:51:26] if you want to do that,

[00:51:27] well,

[00:51:27] you need to.

[00:51:28] Broaden your view.

[00:51:29] So I think that’s,

[00:51:30] that’s the product part.

[00:51:32] Of course,

[00:51:33] there’s a product owner,

[00:51:34] manager,

[00:51:35] et cetera,

[00:51:35] that can help you.

[00:51:37] But I would highly recommend if you can include that in your technical skills,

[00:51:41] it will be one more fun,

[00:51:43] even as an IC,

[00:51:45] but it will be incredibly helpful in your career.

[00:51:47] Even if it’s not going to be your job,

[00:51:48] right?

[00:51:49] You still have a product owner or manager that talks to customers and comes up

[00:51:52] with the list.

[00:51:53] Maybe at one point you say like,

[00:51:54] Hey,

[00:51:55] when you decide that this is going on the roadmap,

[00:51:57] can I join with one of these?

[00:51:58] Calls to customers.

[00:52:00] It will be unexpected,

[00:52:02] but you will learn so much because you know what is technically possible.

[00:52:05] So the product part in tech leaders,

[00:52:08] that’s like one incredibly fun,

[00:52:11] but two,

[00:52:12] that’s where that’s like where your company really goes crazy.

[00:52:17] And it’s interesting by the way,

[00:52:17] how I met this to the dead agile,

[00:52:19] right?

[00:52:21] Yeah.

[00:52:22] So I find every engineers out there,

[00:52:24] right?

[00:52:24] You need to have this product mindset,

[00:52:26] right?

[00:52:26] Some people are actually already calling these,

[00:52:28] these role product engineers,

[00:52:29] right?

[00:52:29] And especially with the,

[00:52:31] you know,

[00:52:31] the advancement of AI,

[00:52:33] right?

[00:52:33] Writing code might not be the pure bottleneck anymore,

[00:52:36] right?

[00:52:37] So it’s more about,

[00:52:38] you know,

[00:52:38] solving the problems,

[00:52:40] solving the problems.

[00:52:41] Uh,

[00:52:41] just understanding the why and also so many other different aspects,

[00:52:46] right?

[00:52:46] And I think the interest of the domain is also something that you need to

[00:52:49] pick up,

[00:52:50] right?

[00:52:50] Because you could just think that a waiting for requirements is one thing

[00:52:54] that you do.

[00:52:54] But I think understanding the domain could actually pick a lot of,

[00:52:58] I don’t know,

[00:52:58] new invention in new innovation.

[00:53:00] I spoke with Marty Kagan a long time ago.

[00:53:02] He’s saying that if your developers are just producing code,

[00:53:05] I think you kind of like underutilize them.

[00:53:07] Um,

[00:53:08] so I think,

[00:53:08] yeah,

[00:53:09] because engineers know the different possibilities for what technology can

[00:53:13] offer to,

[00:53:14] to do things.

[00:53:15] So I think this is very important sharing for you.

[00:53:17] You’re speaking about AI,

[00:53:18] right?

[00:53:18] So I think,

[00:53:19] um,

[00:53:19] it,

[00:53:19] it might be a miss if we don’t talk about AI in an episode these

[00:53:22] days.

[00:53:23] So I saw one of your recent LinkedIn posts about AI,

[00:53:26] which I find very,

[00:53:27] uh,

[00:53:28] interesting that we can discuss,

[00:53:29] right?

[00:53:29] You’re saying that the direction we are going with AI is actually going

[00:53:33] to the wrong direction.

[00:53:35] So tell us what’s your,

[00:53:36] what’s leading you to this,

[00:53:37] um,

[00:53:38] opinion.

[00:53:40] So I think where we are right now,

[00:53:43] if we zoom out all the way,

[00:53:44] right,

[00:53:46] we are going to look at this time of the time before digital

[00:53:50] hygiene,

[00:53:51] right?

[00:53:51] Physical hygiene.

[00:53:52] We have down almost everyone in the world knows you separate poop

[00:53:56] water from drinking water.

[00:53:58] You wash your hands,

[00:53:59] you take showers,

[00:54:01] like basic hygiene,

[00:54:03] even though we’re still teaching some like minor groups,

[00:54:06] it’s doing pretty well,

[00:54:08] digital hygiene.

[00:54:09] And including with that mental and AI hygiene is a big topic.

[00:54:15] And I think one of the problems is we can learn from history,

[00:54:20] right?

[00:54:20] Because at the time of industrialism,

[00:54:23] we had the entrepreneurs were going crazy.

[00:54:26] This is going to change the world.

[00:54:27] Hey,

[00:54:28] wait,

[00:54:28] that’s Sam Altman.

[00:54:29] This is going to revolutionize.

[00:54:30] We never have to do these menial tasks anymore.

[00:54:34] Hey,

[00:54:35] that’s Elon,

[00:54:35] right?

[00:54:36] So I think there’s parallels because these were great inventions.

[00:54:42] And I wouldn’t say it would be better if we didn’t have

[00:54:45] them, but they were absolutely polluting the river at the same time.

[00:54:49] The river at this moment is our mind.

[00:54:51] I believe currently,

[00:54:53] one of the things that I’m seriously worried about is I watched the

[00:54:57] video that I linked.

[00:54:57] On that post.

[00:54:58] So you can find it on my LinkedIn by the healthy gamer.

[00:55:01] I’m very interested in psychology.

[00:55:04] I’m nerdy.

[00:55:04] So of course I’ll land at the health,

[00:55:06] healthy gamer.

[00:55:07] He cites the first research that has now found that use of AI

[00:55:13] can actually induce psychosis in healthy adults.

[00:55:17] That means not in people that are already have a tendency for

[00:55:21] it, because we know for some substances,

[00:55:23] for example,

[00:55:25] there are some drugs and even certain.

[00:55:27] Qualities of alcohol that can induce psychosis in people who have a tendency

[00:55:32] for it, but this can induce it in healthy adults.

[00:55:36] Well, if that isn’t polluting the river, right?

[00:55:38] Do we want to risk this happening without any guardrails for our teams?

[00:55:44] So I don’t say don’t use it.

[00:55:45] I say we need kind of guardrails.

[00:55:48] I called it for now, the AI manifesto.

[00:55:50] I’ll spend the first attempt on my next conference in March on this.

[00:55:54] I’ll publish it as well by that time, but maybe it’s not a

[00:55:57] manifesto.

[00:55:58] I think it’s going to be more like hygiene.

[00:56:01] There are certain tasks that it’s.

[00:56:03] And by the way, it’s so easy to say the word AI,

[00:56:06] but I really want to really make clear that let’s talk about

[00:56:10] LLMs right now, because this was about LLMs.

[00:56:14] Large language models have some structural problems.

[00:56:17] There is quite some discussion between the experts on whether throwing more

[00:56:22] capacity at it will get rid of hallucinations.

[00:56:25] The problem with hallucinations.

[00:56:27] I.

[00:56:27] Need to just differentiate between a human hallucination and a LLM hallucination.

[00:56:33] Silicon Valley has very well branded the word hallucination, but it’s

[00:56:38] basically screw ups, right?

[00:56:40] That the AI just has what it does.

[00:56:42] Anyone that dove into this, I’m going to oversimplify again.

[00:56:45] It’s a model, so it won’t be perfect, but it’s just guessing the next word, right?

[00:56:49] That’s what it does.

[00:56:51] It opens a very interesting philosophical discussion.

[00:56:53] If we also do that as humans, by the way, but let’s, let’s.

[00:56:57] Spark that for a second.

[00:56:59] If the AI is doing guessing words and it can spiral off, that’s

[00:57:04] pretty problematic on its own.

[00:57:07] But what we’ve seen now, since it has been trained for you to stay on, just

[00:57:11] like YouTube algorithms were trained to have you stay on, had nothing to do.

[00:57:16] That was a recommender model, had nothing to do with an LLM.

[00:57:19] Recommender models have now gotten us hooked on those things, by the way, also

[00:57:24] great book on that is hooked by Nir Eyal.

[00:57:26] But what it does is it simply hacks your brain to, to stay on longer.

[00:57:31] The big problem with this is if you keep a human hooked in a text conversation, we

[00:57:37] feel bonded with it, so whatever it suggests, we will take into account because

[00:57:41] at one point it gets a certain status in our mind, we don’t feel per se that that

[00:57:46] is a machine, some of us that was very early on, there was a developer that said

[00:57:51] like, no, it’s conscious, right?

[00:57:52] It was like very, very early on, but that’s an experience.

[00:57:54] And I mean, I, I.

[00:57:55] Yeah.

[00:57:56] I, I talk to chat GPT or in Gemini, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve experienced this, but the

[00:58:00] problem with a human hallucination, we call that when somebody loses touch with

[00:58:06] reality and it starts hurting their environment.

[00:58:09] Now, the problem is if you’re being fed something that is incorrect, and then

[00:58:13] you have a reinforcement cycle, which is actually what is happening, that is

[00:58:17] pretty dangerous and I think we are adopting the technology without too many

[00:58:23] guardrails, I’m not saying we should.

[00:58:26] We shouldn’t adopt it.

[00:58:27] I think it’s great for certain tasks.

[00:58:28] And then again, I’m talking about LLMs recommend their models.

[00:58:32] I think I’ve made our lives already better as astronomy without AI couldn’t have learned

[00:58:37] all the crazy cool things about the universe that we know.

[00:58:41] So there is no world where we will have no AI.

[00:58:44] I’m just a little worried about the LLM part.

[00:58:47] And I’m worried about, will we have guardrails in time?

[00:58:51] On the other hand, this is going to sound really cynical.

[00:58:54] I hope it’s not.

[00:58:55] It might cost us a generation to figure that out, but we, I also

[00:58:58] trust that we always figure it out.

[00:59:01] Henry Suryawirawan, I like the term that you mentioned, digital hygiene, right?

[00:59:03] Because, you know, I kind of like associate this with the problem

[00:59:07] of social media back then, right?

[00:59:09] So when we started to have like social media, you know, Facebook and all that,

[00:59:13] right, we also have this challenge, right?

[00:59:15] We have the mental health problem, right?

[00:59:18] Always comparing and also kind of like the algorithms feeding us into just

[00:59:23] one perspective or one aspect, right?

[00:59:25] Yes.

[00:59:25] So not knowing that actually it is maybe not true, fake news and all that.

[00:59:29] And now we seem to have a different, new challenge with AI, right?

[00:59:34] And something that is different to me is about the natural language

[00:59:37] conversational aspects with AI, right?

[00:59:40] Which I found your article as well that you pointed out, right?

[00:59:43] So it can induce some kind of psychosis to people, right?

[00:59:46] And thinking that everything that AI talks might be true, right?

[00:59:50] And building a relationship, bonding with them.

[00:59:53] And sometimes, right?

[00:59:53] Because AI is very obedient.

[00:59:55] I think this kind of like creates a very complex kind of mindset psychology in your mind, right?

[01:00:00] So I think I hope that you can figure it out within your conference about how to put a proper guardrails, right?

[01:00:07] Because I feel the advancement on the technology and the capability, the capacity is very rapid, right?

[01:00:12] We can see it month over month, week over week.

[01:00:15] But putting the guardrails is something that we are still keeping up behind, right?

[01:00:19] So I think thanks for sharing your perspective on this.

[01:00:22] And I’ll add to this one more thing.

[01:00:25] That the problem is the feedback loop, because that positive feedback loop, the end result, so I don’t think the hallucinations that people will get are unbreakable.

[01:00:34] There’s some problematic cases, but I don’t see that as the major thing.

[01:00:38] But if I want to tie this into an interesting psychological fact, there are five things that on a population basis stay pretty stable.

[01:00:46] And that is the amount of openness, consistency, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.

[01:00:54] Right?

[01:00:55] Those five are pretty good, like, stable things over time in personalities when you zoom out of a population.

[01:01:01] Neuroticism has grown because if you always get, if everything you do, the computer says, yes, everyone thinks this.

[01:01:09] When you hit into a little bit of a conflict, you’re going to go tense up because you never practiced for it, right?

[01:01:16] You’re not habituated to having these mini conflicts.

[01:01:18] So there’s a real effect.

[01:01:19] We measurely see this.

[01:01:21] And because of this same thing, you’re always right.

[01:01:25] You don’t have to try.

[01:01:26] I think that’s why the consistency is also decreasing.

[01:01:29] So the consistency decreasing, meaning discipline is also decreasing.

[01:01:33] People have a harder time following through with what they said.

[01:01:36] So the problems I say wouldn’t be only in that hallucination part, but that feedback loop.

[01:01:41] That’s a huge problem.

[01:01:43] Sorry.

[01:01:43] Yeah, and I can say as well, it comes back to what you shared earlier, right?

[01:01:47] So AI seems to be like kind of like a short term solution for a lot of problems, right?

[01:01:51] Because we might avoid reading books.

[01:01:53] We might avoid doing the hard work.

[01:01:55] We might avoid so many things because AI can just give us, you know, seemingly pretty good solution in the short term.

[01:02:01] But over the long term, probably, you know, you won’t grow.

[01:02:04] You won’t have your critical thinking and probably it will also change the way you build relationships with other people.

[01:02:11] So, Martin, I think it’s been a great pleasure to have you in the show.

[01:02:14] Anything else that you want to share with us before we go to our last question?

[01:02:19] I have one question for you because I think it’s relevant.

[01:02:23] I want to know.

[01:02:23] But I also think it’s relevant.

[01:02:24] For the audience.

[01:02:26] You have been doing this podcast for a while now.

[01:02:30] That is quite some effort to put in.

[01:02:32] I mean, I’ve made podcasts, I’ve made content before, so I know this is a huge effort.

[01:02:39] What’s the value for you?

[01:02:41] Yeah, so I think interesting enough that you mentioned in the beginning about growing, right?

[01:02:46] So one aspect that I use this podcast is actually for me to grow.

[01:02:50] Like having this conversation with so many great, you know, thought leaders, you know,

[01:02:54] people like you and exchanging information.

[01:02:57] I think it’s really, really important for my growth and being a podcaster.

[01:03:01] Something that is very unique is that it depends on the style of podcaster you are, right?

[01:03:05] Some are a bit more extremist and more opinionated.

[01:03:08] For me, I try and I try to be more neutral, meaning that I can hear different extreme perspectives from different people.

[01:03:15] And it kind of like give me a different perspective on how I see things and tackle problems, right?

[01:03:20] I can see the positive things on both sides and negative things on both sides.

[01:03:24] And that’s how I use it to actually grow myself, right?

[01:03:27] And I can share it with other people as well.

[01:03:29] So, so far, the community of listeners that who feel benefited from the sharing that I do this, that’s also one need that I feel very good for me, which is to serve others, right?

[01:03:40] To give values for other people.

[01:03:41] So, yeah, those are probably the two main things that I use during this podcast.

[01:03:46] Yeah.

[01:03:47] If there would have been less effort and you could have gotten a summary of all the episodes without the work, do you think it would have been the same value?

[01:03:54] Well, one aspect, even not just talking about podcasting, I feel it during my work as well.

[01:04:00] I’m still doing a lot of hands-on work in engineering, right?

[01:04:04] These days, it’s almost very easy for everyone to start solving a certain problem just by asking AI, right?

[01:04:10] For me, someone who have done differently before in the earlier career, right, where you have to struggle, you know, figure out from stack overflow, try, you know, and didn’t work and struggle, right?

[01:04:21] And compared to now, which is like, you can just ask different AI.

[01:04:24] Yeah.

[01:04:24] Different solution, keep banging, you know, the questions, the prompts, and somehow you could figure it out.

[01:04:29] I think there’s a big challenge of, you know, how do you actually learn and how do you actually, I don’t know, build that brain connection to innovate new things, understand how fundamentally things work, right?

[01:04:41] I think that part, that muscle might atrophy.

[01:04:44] And this is something that I worry of myself as well.

[01:04:48] And same thing when you ask about this podcast, if all the knowledge out there, you can just easily search and query.

[01:04:53] Maybe it will be good for short term too.

[01:04:54] I don’t want to answer specific question that you have, but philosophically, how you want to think in bigger picture, right?

[01:05:01] How do you want to build a bit better world, you know, solve bigger problems.

[01:05:05] I think it’s something that might be a challenge if we always continue on this path.

[01:05:09] Yeah.

[01:05:11] Or we rely AI that grows super smart, that it can solve everything for us.

[01:05:16] What I’m hearing, so thanks for sharing, by the way, this is great.

[01:05:20] What I’m hearing is what I’m pondering myself lately.

[01:05:24] I think almost everyone is looking for a quick fix and also a binary world of ones and zeros.

[01:05:32] Well, that is not the world, right?

[01:05:34] I think nuance is where it is.

[01:05:38] I think the wisdom is not in the book summary.

[01:05:41] I think the value that you just explained, you got of seeing both sides.

[01:05:47] I think that’s wisdom, but that might be me, but maybe I’m yeah.

[01:05:51] Yeah.

[01:05:52] And I think.

[01:05:53] Yeah.

[01:05:54] from some someone as as well uh last time you know maybe in the book or podcast or something

[01:05:59] even reading a book right you you might have the same text you might have the same pages right

[01:06:04] but different people will interpret the things that is shared in the book maybe it could be

[01:06:09] stories it could be the concepts it could be whatever that is differently right and they

[01:06:13] learn from those aspects so people’s learning path is different even though maybe the gist of

[01:06:17] the summary is kind of like the same you have the same bullet points but how people get there

[01:06:21] actually is something that is unique to them and i find this is the same for you know maybe

[01:06:26] podcasts right building conversations everyone’s will take different takeaways from different parts

[01:06:31] of this conversation and but somehow they could learn something uh new from this yeah sorry you

[01:06:37] were you were saying something as well that’s exactly what i’m just going to drop that and go

[01:06:41] for what you just said is exactly what happens in the peer groups i end every peer group so that’s

[01:06:46] three hours of going around the table and asking what challenge do you have that you would like

[01:06:51] something

[01:06:51] input on and in the end i ask what insight did you get and what one action are you going to take

[01:06:57] everyone’s is always different that’s so cool and and by the way it can also happen within a person

[01:07:04] because i have a weird practice that there’s a book that i reread every year or so seven habits

[01:07:09] of highly effective people by stephen covey i get something else from that every year which is very

[01:07:15] weird but also cool right yeah um and what i think lastly because that’s the last point

[01:07:21] i would like to give to your listeners reading consuming is not the same as producing and i

[01:07:28] understand that it’s the easy way but you know how satisfying producing is because you know how

[01:07:34] it feels when you write a piece of code and it does what you do i recommend if something resonates

[01:07:39] of a podcast and a book why not write something small about it ask someone else about an opinion

[01:07:46] on something but because i think the nuance that’s where you really become a master right i think

[01:07:51] that’s the biggest part of it and i think that’s the biggest part of it and i think that’s the

[01:07:51] beautiful like i do transformations for companies as well and i have some weird habits i’m just

[01:07:57] sharing them at the end i write everyone that i worked intensively with a letter i do it for

[01:08:02] myself actually i ask them in the end do you want it if not also fine but i do it for myself and i

[01:08:08] find writing but also creating like even preparing for this podcast right i needed to think about

[01:08:14] i knew the first and the last question so i needed to think what’s the best way i can do

[01:08:19] i i will give it back to you

[01:08:21] my goal i’m not saying it will make me like excellent right but just that reflection

[01:08:26] sometimes it’s not about that magic new piece of knowledge but sometimes it’s about turning it into

[01:08:32] like yeah digesting it and producing something of yourself i don’t know yeah as a final thought

[01:08:38] so yeah this reminds me of the the quote by richard weidman right so teaching others is the

[01:08:44] next level of learning kind of uh you know because if you consume a lot you think you know but take

[01:08:51] to actually explain it to others even someone who is beginner or maybe juniors or whatever that is

[01:08:57] and if you can’t explain it well such that they would understand that kind of like shows that

[01:09:01] maybe you don’t understand things in the first place so martin it’s been a great conversation

[01:09:07] i have only one last question which is like a tradition in my podcast i call this the three

[01:09:12] technical leadership wisdom think of them just like advice maybe you can share your version today

[01:09:16] that will be great yes the three pieces i will give the very first is in order to speed up

[01:09:26] you sometimes need to slow down meaning exactly what i say but i see people have no problem

[01:09:36] speeding up but i have a lot of problems slowing down this can mean really block that hour for

[01:09:43] yourself and don’t accept other people planning over it

[01:09:46] because you call it focus time by mistake and people know oh focus time i can just plan a

[01:09:50] meeting really take time for reflection the second is knowledge uninvested in action

[01:09:57] is useless so if there is anything that i have said that resonates slightly

[01:10:04] my personal request just try it and if it doesn’t work or does work you will learn something

[01:10:12] and in both cases let me know because that’s fucking cool

[01:10:14] okay

[01:10:16] the third is learn to speak business and if it is not interesting to you you might not know enough

[01:10:26] about each other cool i think those are really powerful uh sharing that you just gave to us

[01:10:32] right i really love the kind of like the second one right so you have all the knowledge you have

[01:10:37] listened to a lot of podcasts reading a lot of books but if you never take the action actually

[01:10:42] it’s kind of like useless in the end so martin if people can i give you i’m sorry i’m sorry

[01:10:46] yeah can i give you the story that made this land by me because i i love telling stories

[01:10:51] i was rowing competitively when i was still before my studies and at one point i was coaching

[01:10:58] competitively i’ve lived in singapore for a year and being the national head coach so i was like

[01:11:03] fit all the time until one point when i stopped rowing competitively but i kept eating like i

[01:11:09] was still rowing competitively and i got pretty fat now that happens and at one point i said to

[01:11:15] myself i’m 20 and i’m not going to row competitively and i’m not going to row competitively and i’m not

[01:11:16] 20 something 24 so i need to lose this weight so i moved more than i lost that weight and being a

[01:11:24] 20 something year old non-polished let’s let’s call it maybe this is also a little bit dutch

[01:11:31] but i was very politely loudly calling a friend on the phone while in the tram in amsterdam saying

[01:11:37] yeah i lost all this weight i regret that part of the story but there was a lesson there that

[01:11:43] was fantastic because opposite of me there was a person that could not

[01:11:46] fit in the seat like hugely obese which was taking an interest into this story of me

[01:11:52] using losing 20 kilograms and when i hung up she asked did i just hear that you lost over 20

[01:12:00] kilograms and i said very proud yeah can you tell me how you did it so well i started eating less

[01:12:08] and moving more and she went like this and this is the lesson

[01:12:16] i hoped you would have the magic formula

[01:12:19] wow that’s a very powerful story it’s kind of like i think it’s a good reflection for us we

[01:12:26] i think most of us know kind of like the solutions the answers you know we have the internet we have

[01:12:32] the books with resources available to us if only we could just pick a small part of those

[01:12:38] take an action experiment do small things and iterate and improve your lives i think that

[01:12:43] would be that would bring us to some somewhere

[01:12:46] that probably we’ll never know before and hopefully to the positive side of your life

[01:12:50] so thanks for sharing that powerful story martin if people would love to connect with you you know

[01:12:56] hear more stories from you or join your peer groups is there a place where they can find you

[01:13:00] online yep so first i have a little gift i have a free training on taking action because it’s easy

[01:13:06] to say but then how do you do it on my website groupeffort.nl action there’s a free training

[01:13:13] on action it’s four times five minutes it’s just

[01:13:16] quick but it will help you if you’re like okay but where do i begin so that’s a little gift

[01:13:20] if you want to stay in touch i have a newsletter groupeffort.nl slash newsletter also not that hard

[01:13:28] and if you want to say hi on linkedin i’m called martijn versteegh but you can also go to

[01:13:33] linkedin.com slash in slash versteegh v-e-r-s-t-e-e-g and i’d be very happy to

[01:13:40] hear if anything that i said had a positive or negative effect i hope so and i’ll see you next time

[01:13:46] hope not but um that will be fantastic henry thank you so much for having me yeah cool i’ll

[01:13:51] put all those links into the show notes thanks for the game as well i hope people learn something

[01:13:56] a thing or two from our today’s conversations and yeah thank you so much for your time today martin

[01:14:16] and i’ll see you next time

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