Kenneth Berger
Kenneth Berger coaches startup leaders on how to prevent burnout, advocate for their desired lifestyle, and make a meaningful impact on the world. He’s spent more than 20 years in the tech industry, is a former founder backed by top investors, and was the first product manager at Slack. Kenneth’s core mission is to help startup leaders change the world by learning to ask for what they want, living with integrity, and building genuine relationships even with the people they find most challenging. Currently he is writing a book, Ask for What You Want, in which he aims to share his actionable strategies for creating change in the world.
Career Skills
Failing to advocate for yourself and ignoring feedback can lead to career setbacks and significant emotional burnout.
"I was fired from Slack three different times... I spent that year being fully out of integrity with myself. Never saying what I really wanted, how I really felt because it didn't feel safe. I was too..."
Communication Skills
Influence is often more effective when you state your preference clearly but with deep humility and respect for the decision-maker's authority.
"I really disagree with this product decision and I would really prefer that we make this different decision. I know it's not my call and I'm just one opinion and a lot of people are going to see thing..."
True alignment requires 'enthusiastic consent' or a 'hell yes' rather than a lukewarm agreement that leads to missed deadlines.
"I'm hearing maybe you're lukewarm on May 1st as a date. What would be a hell yes day for you where you could say, absolutely, we can deliver on that?"
Hiring & Teams Skills
Early alignment on working styles and expectations prevents future friction and 'out of integrity' behavior.
"I recommend to a lot of founders for maybe their first 10 or 15, or 20 employees of just have a relationship design conversation with each of them when they're first hired."
Leadership Skills
Nice leaders often struggle with negative feedback because they fear damaging relationships or appearing unkind.
"I work with a lot of founders who are not the sort of classic control freaks. They're super nice and their teams love them and they love their teams. So for them, it can be really hard to deliver hard..."
Effective feedback should be paired with a specific request for change or a desired future state.
"I love radical candor, for example, where I try to go a step further than radical candor is to not just say, 'Hey, here's my feedback. Just wanted you to know.' But to say, 'And I want something. I wo..."
A structured feedback loop involves describing a specific behavior, expressing a genuine feeling, and stating the purpose for the change.
"And it's basically when you want to give someone feedback, the template is when you do a behavior, I feel a feeling, and she's big on like say actual feeling word not like, 'I feel like, or I feel tha..."
Understanding the inherent fear and pressure founders face can help reports interpret and navigate their behavior more effectively.
"To me, it really is about the relationship with the CEO or with the founders because that's the root of a lot of the issues that come out of that scenario... Imagine that they're terrified all the tim..."
Expert intuition and 'gut data' are critical inputs to the decision-making process that are often suppressed in data-driven cultures.
"I think often the dangers of people saying, 'Oh, I don't have data to back this up. It's just what I think. And I'm not sure people are going to agree with me, so I'm just not going to say it.' So we..."