Having a Clear Vision

What about the people you lead, how do you encourage them? What specific strategies or tools or approaches do you give them to embrace ambiguity and get comfortable with being uncomfortable?

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, and I’ll just be very honest. I think part of it is, as we build our team, the first step is actually even in the hiring process, like, talking with people about it and just being really open about the fact that this isn’t a place where, you know, this isn’t an industry when you walk in and everything’s given to you on a playbook and everything’s been done before.
And particularly with the work that BetterUp does, we’re about human transformation. And the fact is, we are in a business that helps people change to really work on becoming the best versions of themselves. And as humans, we’re constantly evolving and changing. So we’re naturally driving change with people who are constantly changing.
So one is, I think, just really being open and honest about that and also in the hiring process, really working to understand is the team that you’re building comfortable? Are they people who will be able to be comfortable with some of that ambiguity and some of that change? And the fact is, some people aren’t, and that’s totally okay. And I think it’s just really working with folks on that.
I think once the team is in place, a lot of that work goes into really, again, just like having a clear vision for the team and having a clear strategy in place. And even when that strategy has to evolve, making sure that the team understands why and making sure that the folks that you’re leading really understand that it’s not just swirling and thrashing for the sake of it or that we’re changing because we’re chasing something, but that really that there’s a bigger idea and that this is you know, if we’re going through these moments of change, that the things that we need to do and the things that we need to put in place are in service of something. And again, that there’s a real purpose and an intention behind it.
And so I think just being able to continually ground the team in why we’re making these changes and then also, as there’s ambiguity, understanding, again, even if there is some ambiguity, there’s a big thing that we’re trying to get to. So let’s figure out how we get there together.