Matt Mochary

Deep alignment is achieved by reflecting back the unspoken, often stronger emotions and thoughts of the other person.

"If I want to make you really feel heard, I reflect back what I imagine are the thoughts in your head... I say something to you like, 'Lenny, I think what I'm hearing you say is you're off and you're t..."

Moving status updates and problem routing to a pre-read format can reduce meeting times by over 75%.

"You know what would be exquisite? It would be exquisite if everyone pre-prepared their update, which said how they're doing against their priorities, regular green, what they did last week, what they'..."

Small teams are more effective because they minimize the geometric growth of coordination overhead and communication friction.

"Really the only answer is... to keep the team super small. That's what WhatsApp did, that's what Instagram did, that's what Linear is doing right now. That's what Notion has been doing for a while. Th..."

Post-crisis 1:1s should focus entirely on active listening and emotional processing to stabilize the remaining team.

"With each and every person on the stay team, you have a one-on-one with their manager for one hour and all the manager does is say, 'I'd like to know your thoughts and feelings,' and the person shares..."

The success of a layoff depends entirely on the news being delivered personally by a direct manager in a private setting to maintain human dignity.

"The biggest marker that I've seen between a botched layoff and a successful layoff is at the moment someone hears that they no longer have a job, did they hear it from their manager in a one-on-one? I..."

Fear often leads leaders to avoid necessary but difficult conversations by making exaggerated negative predictions.

"I believe that fear is actually giving you bad advice and I think you're predicting that if you do this A will happen. Well, I'm predicting that if you do that, the exact opposite will happen."

Using non-judgmental 'I' statements to identify a leader's emotional state can help them pause before causing relational damage.

"I at times feel anger and I act on that anger and I don't even realize I'm in anger... she said, 'I perceive you to be in anger.' So it's an I statement and it's simply what she's perceiving. There's..."

Effective firing requires separating the business decision from the compassionate implementation of helping the person find their next role.

"The reason people are bad at this is because they think that they're hurting the person who they're letting go... Decision is one thing, implementation is completely and utterly separate. That's the s..."

Giving a brief warning before delivering bad news prevents the 'surprise' trigger that causes emotional hijacking.

"I start it off, 'Hey, this is going to be a difficult conversation. I want you to take a few seconds and prepare yourself. You are not going to enjoy this.' What I found is that the way the amygdala g..."

In large-scale layoffs, it is better to make one deep cut than multiple smaller rounds that destroy team trust and morale.

"You actually want to cut deep because cutting two times or three times creates PTSD in an organization. It's trauma one, trauma two, trauma three. Now they're like, ah, it's just going to keep happeni..."

Delegation should be driven by an 'energy audit' to remove tasks that drain your life force, even if you are excellent at them.

"The key is to go and look at your day. It's not that you figure out what it is and do more of that, it's that you figure out what it isn't and eliminate that and then naturally, you'll be drawn toward..."

A rigorous system of cascading goals and tracked agreements is essential for organizational alignment.

"You need to have goals and at the company level, at the department level, at the individual level, you then need to track those goals. You need to track all the agreements that people make, all the ac..."

Leaders must proactively block time for their 'Top Goal' to avoid being consumed by reactive tasks.

"The second one is top goal, which is this concept from McKeown, who wrote Essentialism, which is everyone is making requests of you, but if all you do is spend all day is responding to other people's..."