4 Leadership Communication Techniques that will help you ace L6-L9 behavioral/leadership interviews

0:00 I'm just curious where you are dialing in from. So, can you please put your location in the chat and let me know? Okay, I'll go first. Florida. Hi, Fernando. Seattle. Uh, Chicago. Hi, Ash. Anna, San Francisco.

0:34 Oh, yes. Christina is also in San Francisco. Nancy is almost San Francisco. Almost. Yes. I'm in the Bay Area. South Bay. Yes. Oh, more people are joining. Yes. We're just warming up. Um, Susan is from Orlando. Nice to meet you, Susan. Wait, did you say it right? Huh? Maybe it's not pronounced that. Suzanne.

1:10 Oh, please correct me if wrong. Let us know. Yes, please put where you are currently in the chat and let us know. Christina is my friend in case you're wondering. You're like, "Wow, that that person is really enthusiastic about this lightning talk. I'm helping Nancy out." Yes, she is helping me out with uh with all the questions and the comments. Lillian is dialing in from San Diego.

1:44 Suzanne. Suzanne, is that right? No. Oh, Suzan. Oh, we don't know the emphasis. and I could tell you the story. It's a unique name. You're like Beyonce, the only one in the world. I love that. All right, folks who are just joining, thank you so much for spending your Monday afternoon with us. We are just warming up and my ask since I'm curious is to put your location in the chat and let me know where you're dialing in from.

2:20 And now I am wondering if I could turn off the waiting room feature. I don't know how to do that. Oh, Christina, do you know does anyone know how to turn off the waiting room feature? I think it's in your settings. I'm not the host. Oh my gosh, there's like 5,000 different settings. Um, okay. I'll just make me the host. Um, maybe someone here works at Zoom.

2:52 Sacramento. Rishi, welcome. Mangjunath, did we say that right? From Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Namita from Dallas. Yeah, that's that's man. Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Great to meet you. Very nice. So happy to meet you. Mjunathan Jay Gandhi J Gandhi Sunny SoCal Jay I'm just gonna call you Jay if that's okay. That's not right. You got to get people's entire names.

3:27 Uh well let me know what you would like to be called and I will call you by your preferred name. With that he has a Gandhi in his name. I mean how can you forget? Yes. That's true. That's true. Pie is peace. Yes. Um, I actually see some familiar names. Um, here's my second question for you. If this is the first time that we're meeting each other, please put one in the comments or in the chat. But if we already know each other, please put two. I'm just curious who I'm talking to. Okay, we have a lot of ones. We have some twos.

4:11 That's great. Well, since a lot of you were just meeting for the very first time, it is so nice to meet you. Um, I am dialing in from California. And actually, because my slide is within my camera frame, I think I have to spotlight myself. Did you figure out the waiting room thing? No, I did not. Um, I did not. So, I will have to Okay, I'm gonna make you a host.

4:49 Sorry, technical bumbles. Okay. Okay, so please let people in if they're in the waiting waiting room. Meanwhile, we're going to get started. Yeah, I have the controls now. Okay, great. Thank you so much. Okay. So, today we're here uh because I want to share techniques that I have seen work really well with my clients when it comes to acing L6 and above behavioral and leadership interviews. And if this is the first time that we're meeting each other, I'm seeing a lot of ones um in in the chat.

5:22 Welcome. I'm so happy that you're here. My name is Nancy Chu and I am a leadership coach. Prior to doing coaching full-time, I used to be PM director at Roku and PM manager at Meta. And when I was at Meta, I've conducted over 200 interviews for both IC roles as well as people management roles. And it took me so long, so many years to get to this point. And my journey was not smooth whatsoever. And often times I just I felt that I was in the arena by myself, face down, covered in dirt. Not only did I fail the interview multiple times, I also had a very hard time getting Meta to interview me. I remember getting ghosted by by recruiting. I remember trying to network and get in touch with hiring managers and it was very very hard to even get them to want to give me a chance to interview and when I did get a chance to interview I didn't do well despite putting in over a 100 hours of prep. So my journey has not been smooth sailing and that's why when I finally cracked the interview I was so excited. Um and I became so passionate in learning more about communication techniques and interview techniques because I just did not want everyone to go through the same journey that I went through. And eventually uh I became recruiting's main partner in assessing some of the most important signals in these interviews.

6:59 And my last lightning lesson on the Maven platform was actually back in December because I saw really good results from my clients back in 2024. And then when 2025 Q1 was wrapping up and I saw very good results in Q1, I was thinking, well, there must be something to be said about the techniques that I recommend because they're working and I've seen it work across different companies, different clients. The commonality is that they've they were able to leverage these techniques to land staff level, uh, GPM level, principal level, and director level roles. So I thought, okay, maybe I could do these lightning uh lessons quarterly to just report back to you what has worked for my clients so that you don't have to go this go through this process alone even when we're not working together. And just for your data point, the highest compensation number that I have seen from my client in Q1 is 728K in total compensation. And for this particular client, they upleveled almost double their total comp from 400K to 728K. And this is what I consider to be completely life-changing growth, life-changing compensation. I experienced a similar compensation increase and it has completely changed my quality of life. It also changed the quality of life for my family. Uh, in the most realistic sense, I was able to fund my daughter's 529 maxed out for the next five years. And that just gives me so much peace of mind not having to worry about her college education, which is not a luxury that I had when I was growing up. And because I've experienced the the benefit and the the the improvement in the quality of life, I am now really passionate in helping you experience this type of growth and this type of uh life-changing experience as well. And that's what keeps me going.

9:13 And today um I want to introduce you to my friend. You've already heard from her in the beginning of the call, Christina of Han, who will be helping us with our um with our chats and then she will help me figure out what questions to answer at the end of this call. So I'm going to hand the mic over to Christina. She is a executive uh coach and also a zone of genius maximizer. She ha she helped me identify my zone of genius and she taught me how to leverage it which is a great tool in helping you navigate work and also navigate life with a lot more ease and achieve more impact. So Christina, can you come on stage? Maybe I need to remove my spotlight and you can say a few words. Oh, okay. Do I add spotlight? Oh, nice. Because I'm the host. Hi everyone. I'm Christina. As Nancy said, um, and yes, I'm an executive coach. I help you master your mindset and sell yourself confidently, uh, in interviews by leveraging your zone of genius, uh, which is how we stand out from everyone else in the world. Um, and I'm just here today to help Nancy out. Um, feel free to ask questions along the way in the chat. Um I will keep track of that and then we will have Q&A at the end end of the hour or end of the session. Sorry. Um yes.

10:45 So that's that's it. Great. And I'm also trying to figure out how to remove the spotlight for myself. Ah I got it and then add you back so that we can get back on it. and yes to J. Uh I also really like the term zone of genius and use it all the time. Um all right, where was I? Okay, so I was actually trying really hard to condense the content so I could wrap everything up at the 30 actually at the top of the hour, but I've not been successful. So, if you're able to stay a little bit longer, the content portion of this talk is probably going to um go 5 or 10 minutes longer than scheduled.

11:35 So, I hope that you can stick around um because I want to make sure that my communication and my delivery to you is as clear as possible. Framing is very important to help us achieve that goal. And the the frame that I want to use for today's discussion actually came from my coach in terms of what it means to achieve success in anything in life. So she defined success as a formula that has three variables in it. Clarity, number two, right actions and then number three time. What this means is everything in terms of achieving your goals and achieving success first and foremost starts with number one having clarity on what is needed to make sure that your your goals come true. That way it's going to help you define the right actions that you need to be taking. Not just any action, but the right actions that are right for you, that are right for your situation. and then actually putting in the time to implement those right actions and that's how you achieve anything in life. So for us I've set a goal for this session to center around making sure that I provide you as much clarity as possible so that afterwards you will know what the actions are that are right for you and that is how you shorten your time to offer in this interview um cycle that you might be going through right now. And one of the most effective ways that I have learned that will help you uh have a lot more clarity is to actually go straight into addressing some of the assumptions that you might be making right now when it comes to prepping for your interviews.

13:23 And the assumption that I want to talk about is probably one that is deeply rooted in the deepest layer of your core and that is around this assumption that I need to be perfect. It's basically perfectionism that is showing up that might be showing up for you. And the reason why I think that this is very deeply rooted in the deepest layer of your core is because it has a ripple effect. It not affects it. It not only affects how you talk, but it also affects how you think, also affects how you feel. And when you feel differently or when you think differently, it's going to it's going to affect the stories that you tell, which is what we're doing in the interview prep. When we think with clarity, we will then be able to speak with a lot more clarity.

14:14 So, let me know if you identify as a perfectionist. I am a partial perfectionist and maybe 50% perfectionist, but let me know in the chat if if perfectionism also shows up in your day-to-day. And while you're putting that in the chat, I want to go two layers deeper because I believe that perfectionism is at the core of every of a lot of the actions that we take and it shows up in two main ways. The first way is assuming that we need to memorize all the answers. And the second way is assuming that we need to be the hero in all the stories that we tell. If number one resonates with you and if this also shows up for you, I want to know. Put number one in the comments. And if number two shows up for you, put number two in the comments and let me know. And if if there's something else that shows up, I also want to know. I'm curious what is showing up for you when it comes to interview prep. Sanjay said sadly yes one and two.

15:23 I know me too. I feel the same way. Number two. Totally. Rishi said one. Ilia said one. Rachel said two. Neither. Keep it real on authentic. I love that. Ash said one. I want to start with number one because it's um it shows up in almost all of my clients with the assumption that we need to memorize everything. And this actually is kind of counterintuitive because logically speaking, our logical brain actually knows very well that overmemorizing leads to anxiety and also leads to robotic answers. And so we know it's not a good idea to memorize everything. And yet we still sometimes feel that we need to write out everything and we need to make sure that everything is right. I want to talk about anxiety for a little bit because the reason why it's important to manage your anxiety level is that it actually prevents you from thinking very clearly in the interview setting. And that's because the emotional brain has take completely taken over the logical brain which means the logical brain is offline. That means you can't think in a moment. And that's why so many people say, "Oh, I came up with the perfect answer afterwards."

16:46 That's exactly why when your anxiety is high, that means your emotional brain is on turning off the logical brain and that explains why you cannot think at the moment. So when your anxiety is managed and lower in these situations, you can then navigate with a lot more ease and navigate with a lot more grace in these situations. That's why it's important to find tools that will work for you. Now, the the technique that I have found to work really well for me and my clients when we're dealing with the emotional brain is to actually redirect the emotion to something that's actually a lot more true than the assumption that you might be making right now. And what's more true is that having a deeper understanding of your projects is actually a lot more compelling and a lot more useful compared to the assumption around memorizing all the details. Now you might ask what is deep understanding mean? Of course I have a deep understanding. I worked on the projects. Yes and no. So because we don't really know what it means to articulate with a lot of depth, I came up with two ways that are actually very easy to implement. The first way is clarity of purpose. Why did this project get prioritized for this company? Why is this significant for the company? Why now? Why not later? Or why now? And why not six months before? If you're able to clearly articulate the purpose of the project that you have led, you can then more easily um showcase yourself as a deep and strategic thinker. And the second way that could really help you demonstrate your deep understanding is leveraging first principles. If you have clarity around the first principles that you have used to derive product decisions, you will sound like a a lot more strategic thinker than than you were before. It all has to do with how you articulate your thinking. Now, most people when I most of my clients when we first meet, they can't really articulate the principles that they were leveraging. But you all have principles.

19:11 It's just that you cannot really articulate art clearly articulate what those principles are and really knowing the difference between leadership principles versus product principles. These are different and we if you could get really clear on what principles you leverage to decide certain decisions, you will sound like you're you will sound like someone with um a really deep understanding on what moves the needle for your projects. So my invitation to you is to really lean into what's more true, which is you don't need all the details, but only those that highlight your strategic reasoning. And this is actually probably the hardest part in the interview prep is to have a wellcalibrated sense on what is needed, what is not needed, what is more strategic, what is not as strategic. And this is where you should put in more work and not necessarily stressing out on memorizing all the details. Now a lot of you also put number two in the chat. The second symptom in which perfectionism might be showing up for you is around the need and assumption that you have to be the hero in all the stories. But why is this actually problematic? Won't you appreciate a candidate who's actually the hero in solving all the issues?

20:36 Maybe, maybe not. Let's talk about it. So when you have hero complex or when the hero complex is showing up for you, it's going to cause you to want to skim or omit the complexities and the challenges that you have faced because you want to just go straight into talking about all the actions that you have taken to lead the projects to success. This is basically hero complex showing up in your interview setting. Now I want to take a second and actually talk about the state of mind between a interviewer and a candidate. And with that I'm going to bring out my prop. So this cup that has a gap inside represents an interviewer who has a gap to fill. This lid represents the candidate which is you. The state of mind of a interviewer is one that focuses a lot on the gap that they're trying to fill. So if you the candidate show up in the interview setting with the hero complex and you skim over the problems and you just talk about all the actions that you have taken, what you're actually assuming is that the interviewer can translate the actions that you have taken to then see okay I see that they could solve my problems.

21:59 you're assuming the interviewer can do that translation, but interviewers don't spend a lot of time thinking deeply about every candidate that they're talking to. In fact, the interview decision, the higher or no hire decision is pretty much for the most part made on the spot by the interviewer. And so there's not a lot of deep thinking that's happening in this picture. So what you could do is to actually make sure that they understand you as a candidate make sure that they understand the problems that you have navigated in the past and make sure you highlight complexity which is very important for L6 levels and above and h make sure that they resonate with the complexities that you're facing and when they see oh yeah the gap that I'm trying to fill is kind of similar to the gap that you filled more naturally and organically lean in and listen more to the actions that you now are describing. And that is you doing the translation for them, showcasing that you're the perfect person that will help them fill the fill the gap. That's why it's important to make sure you don't just skim over the complexities and the problems. And the third way that hero complex can show up for you is making you want to avoid being vulnerable and want to sugarcoat all the failures and weaknesses that you might have had in the past. Now this is um the reason why I didn't do very well when I interviewed that one time for meta in the leadership and drive interview. The feedback was that the interviewer felt that I had a wall up between us, that I was trying to make sure that all the stories are perfect. I was trying to make sure that, you know, there's rainbows and butterflies and unicorns and they feel like they couldn't really get through.

24:01 And when you portray that everything is kind of perfect without being vulnerable, something is going to feel off and they're not going to feel very connected with you because no one is perfect, right? And we also know from Bnee Brown that vulnerability is a sign of courage and vulnerability is a sign of leadership. Which is another reason why it's important to not avoid being vulnerable and really being transparent in articulating what the failures are and what your weaknesses are in a strategic way.

24:37 So my invitation to you is to lean in and trust that you don't need to be the hero in every story that you tell. What's actually more important than being a hero is to make sure that you are coming across as a thoughtful and strategic leader who can navigate complexity. Very important for L6 and above is the complexity which is one of the most important signals in determining your level. how complex are the problems that you're solving for and how big is your scope. These are some of the most important signals that we look for. And you're also a leader who is self-aware, who is adaptable, who is constantly learning. And mainly because a leader who is constant learning, who is self-aware, is someone who can keep up with all the changes and who can do really well in an environment that is very fastm moving and very impact driven. Especially with the technology that we're seeing today changing every month, changing every week, sometimes changing every day. When the environment that we're in is changing all the time, you as a leader also need to be someone who is seen to be constantly learning and being adaptable to all the changes that might be happening around you. And the oneliner that I really love is you want to be the leader who is getting better every day in every way.

26:13 You want to be the leader who's getting better every day in every way. No one is perfect, but everyone can get better and be selfreflective and be super self-aware. So given everything that we have discussed so far when it comes to assumptions that you might be making and how it changes how you think, how you feel, and how you act. Let's put it all together by using an example. And the reason why I started by addressing your assumption is again my goal is to help you derive more clarity so that you could figure out what the right actions are that you should be taking after this call because the techniques that I'm about to share with you with these uh through the examples came from ways to manage these assumptions that you might be making in your interview prep journey. So, let's put it together using this example prompt. Tell me about a time you had to influence a difficult product decision. I want I want you to take a second and really think about how you would answer a question like this. This question is multiaceted because you need to talk about the problems that you are facing.

27:31 You need to talk about the decision that you're making. And we talked about earlier, you want to talk about why you made the decision the way you did. What principles did you leverage in that decision making process? And then what happens afterwards? So this question is multiaceted. And just as a reminder before we prep for the story, we want to get really clear on who we are and what our identity is. The identity that I recommend is a leader who is a strategic thinker who is very good at navigating complexity and ambiguity, self-aware, adaptable, and someone who's getting better every day in every way. And if this doesn't resonate with you, I still invite you to take some time and get really clear on what your identity is. And when we're preparing for storytelling, especially stories that will pretty much dictate your future, you actually want to start really deep in your identity layer. So, whatever persona that you want to be, make sure that you take some time and visualize that that's who you are. So, we're going to breathe this in and integrate this persona and this vibe with every cell in your body as we go into workshopping this um example question. And with the discussion so far, I derived four techniques to manage the different ways that perfectionism might be showing up for you. Starting with the first one and this one really bothers a lot of perfectionists because it's not following the standardized um interview framework approach and that is I recommend that you start with your unique perspective which is your spicy take. And if you've been in my world for a while you would know that I talk about bluff all the time bottom line up front as a way to hook them into your world.

29:32 You want to go really wide before you go deep into sharing what the situation was. After that with uh technique number two, you want to highlight the complexities that you were navigating because this is where the magic happens, right? This is what can help you resonate with the interviewer who has a gap to fill before you tell them that you're very competent. And that takes it takes us to number three, which is when you're talking about the actions that you have taken, you want to use more strategic language compared to operational language. And I'm going to show you an example of what that means.

30:10 And number four, when you're talking about decisions that you made, you want to uh anchor use the anchors that you use, which is first principles around why you did the things that you did. So let's start with version one of the answer and we're going to leverage the star framework which is what we already know and then we're going to end with a reflection at the end because our persona is someone who is reflective, adaptable and someone who's getting better every day in every way. Okay, so let's go ahead with the story. Here we go.

30:53 I lead our enterprise AI platform and launched our firstgen AI features. But when we launched, we saw that adoption was low and competitors were catching up. And we had a tough choice to make between iterating on existing architecture or rebuilding it. And so I gathered data. I workshopped the different options with engineering. I analyzed the pros and cons. I came up with a strategy. I aligned with stakeholders. I presented a plan to leadership and got their buy in.

31:29 And then I built a process to track execution because we didn't have a lot of time to experiment. We really needed to ship fast. And then at the end, we saw 300% increase in adoption. And what I learned is that the truly hard decisions are the ones that don't have an obvious answer. And once you choose an option, execution can be equally challenging or even more challenging than making the decision itself because it requires alignment, commitment, and a shared vision of transforming an entire industry. That's the end of version one. Okay. So now let's talk about version two. And this time we're going to insert a hook in the front before the star star framework. And then still we're going to end with a reflection afterwards. And the fourth techniques again just as a summary you're going to start with a unique perspective which is a hook. And then you're going to highlight the complexities that you have faced. You're going to use more strategic language than operational language. Number four, you're going to mention and articulate the first principles that you're leveraging. And when I tell you version two of the story, I want you to look for four where I'm leveraging these four techniques.

32:54 And I'm going to ask you afterwards if you're able to find them. Okay? So, here we go. H Let me think about the best way to tell this story. The underlying principle of a difficult decision is that either the right path isn't very clear or it's very tough to execute it afterwards. Now in my case it was both making the decision was hard and executing on in that decision was also very hard.

33:31 Well, we were evolving our enterprise AI platform to transform how our businesses leverage AI every day. And our mission wasn't just more AI features. We wanted to fundamentally shift enterprise workflow. The adoption was lagging though after we shipped and it wasn't very obvious if the issue was technical related or implementation related or product market fit. And we didn't know whether to iterate on existing platform or rebuild our AI layer. But what we did know was two things. Number one, building incremental features would lead to higher tech debt later, which will be expensive to maintain later. And number two, we need a new platform if we want to stay true to our mission. It's a matter of when and not if. And that's why I recommended the rebuild which supports our vision to enable enterprise transformation. But executing on that principle was super tough. We had to slow down feature launches. We had to help sales manage customer expectations and restructure engineering team so that they could focus on the new architecture. Results-wise, we actually had to sacrifice a lot of quick deals.

34:50 But a year later, integration time went from months to weeks and adoption increased 3x and we established ourselves as the industry standard in enterprise AI. What I learned is that the hardest part of a hard decision is not just in the requirement for technical or strategic clarity, but also the requirement for org and cultural shifts. The rebuild sounded really good on paper, but it meant getting sales, customer support, and leadership to think and operate very differently about AI. It's just a very different way of working. And together, we all needed the courage to accept ambiguity, to have a new mindset. And even the best plan would fail if the org isn't ready to support it. And the biggest learning of all is that anchoring on our first principle was very effective in aligning the org which is enable deep AI workflow transformation or risk irrelevance six months later. And if we had settled for incremental wins, we would have missed a chance to redefine how enterprises harness AI. And that is the real impact that our team drove beyond the metrics. So, that's the end of version two. And as a reminder, here are the four techniques that I leveraged in the second version of the story. And I'm curious if you're able to find and um and uh pinpoint the places where I was leveraging these four techniques. And I'm super curious if you were able to notice where I leveraged these. If you found them, please put it in the chat and let me know. Could you share the slide with a hook example?

36:44 Yes. The hook that I used is the underlying principle of a difficult decision is that either the right path isn't very clear or tough to execute it. And in my case, it was both. Yes. Uh using first principles and explain your decision making thought process.

37:24 Yes. Lippy. Hi Lippy. Good to see you. Uh Lippy said you had a lot of good use of strategic language throughout the answer. Some places were around culture shift, courage, etc. Yes, exactly. I'm glad that you caught that. So that is number technique number three using more strategic language than operational language.

37:55 What about uh highlighting complexities? Did anyone find did you find places where I was trying to communicate complexity in the situation part? Yes, exactly. I'm glad that you're seeing the pattern. So here, thank you, Christina. So hopefully that gives you uh an idea on how these different techniques can be applied when you're preparing your stories. And here are the takeaways that I wish that you could take away with you after this call. Starting with the first one, it's not about which framework to use. What matters more is the depth. So here I'm just using the very simple star framework but I'm starting with a hook and also ending with reflection. What matters more is the depth. And you want to highlight the challenges. If they don't appreciate the problems, they won't appreciate your solutions. If they think that your problem is trivial, they're going to trivialize your solution and that's going to affect how senior you sound in these interviews.

39:11 And number three, you want to highlight strategic reasoning. What is the purpose of the project? What's the purpose of the product? Why is it important for the company? First principles that you are leveraging to make the decisions that you did and getting really clear on that. And then reflections. Um try to see if you could come up with a reflection that is deeper than you would normally. So, you want to take your first draft and you're going to just ask yourself, can I go deeper here? Is there more that I could um derive from this experience? And there is one more thing that I actually think is m way more important than the three takeaways that I'm sharing with you now. And that is there's actually a very nice flywheel effect when we approach interview prep the right way. And that is treating it like a upgrade, an upleveling in better leadership communication skills. Now I hear this all the time. My clients say, "I'm great at my job, but I'm bad at interviewing. I agree, but I also don't agree. I have a different perspective."

40:24 Because this statement is coming from a state of mind that kind of decouples the job from the interview. You're basically assuming that these are two very separate things. But I see it differently because they're actually very very similar at the core of it. And that is leadership communication is leadership communication. Whether you're interviewing or leading meetings, they're the same. But what does that mean? Leadership communication is basically everything that we've already talked about today. It's communicating with strategic clarity. It's storytelling and then tailoring your message so that it is audience focused.

41:03 You want to get really clear on what you think your audience's state of mind is and tailor the messaging according accordingly. That's what leadership communication is. And how does it help you at work? It's going to help you distill complexity when you meet with leadership. It's going to help you frame the challenges in your meetings and it's going to help you articulate your ideas with lot with a lot more clarity when you're under pressure. So my invitation to you is to lean in and trust that every time you improve your communication skills, you're also growing as a leader in interviews and at work. And when you elevate your next conversation, you could also see that it's a gamecher for your career whether you're interviewing or not. And I just want to uh take us back to the success formula that we started this conversation with that has three variables in it. My goal was to help you have more clarity and help you identify what exactly you could improve in your communication so that after this call you could take the right actions that are actually needlem movers and not just random actions. And that is how you could shorten your time to offer if you're interviewing relatively soon. And as a reminder and a summary, these are the four techniques that we have used.

42:33 Starting with your hook, which is your unique perspective. It's not the situation that you had, it's the perspective you have on a situation. In this example, it's the perspective you have around making a hard call. What makes it hard? The hook that I used is well, it's hard either because the choices are not very clear or you know the execution is going to be super hard after you make the call. That's the hook that I used. And then number two, you want to highlight the complexities because this is where the magic happens.

43:05 And then when you're talking about the actions, everything that you have done, you want to use more strategic language compared to operational language. And then you want to use first principles. get really clear on what the principles are to explain the decision making thought process. Last but not least, I invite you to trust and lean in that you might just be one conversation away from your changing your entire career trajectory very similar to the results that my clients have seen in 2024 and also 2025 Q1. And if you need help in identifying what to do to improve your communication and also if you need help in uh applying these techniques because we all know that it's very easy to understand the techniques but much harder to apply it on your own. I'll be sending you an invite after this call if you choose to make your next conversation the moment everything shifts for you for the better. And with that, how did I do on time? Okay, 13 minutes um over.

44:13 Hopefully you can stick around and uh Christina, what questions can I answer for the for the group? Okay. Yes. So, first question I think everyone wants to know. Arian and Moni asked it. Are you going to be sharing a recording for those for the whole time? Yes, I will share the recording. It will also be on my YouTube channel. Oh, awesome. Okay. And then next question was, and if people have questions, feel free to put it in the chat as well.

44:44 Um, Mary asked, um, on the part where you were talking about don't don't be the hero and being vulnerable and Bnee Brown. Um, Mary asks, "So you mean that we don't need to be so honest about mistakes, but come across more like understanding and depth and observational?" Um well we should be honest but it has to do with how you frame what the mistakes are. Um most of the art is actually in the framing.

45:18 So what what failures or what mistakes you have made and maybe why did you think it was a good idea at that time but then looking back hindsight is always 2020 right so it's easy to say that oh I shouldn't have done that but you wouldn't have known in that moment why not that's what you could lean into okay awesome thanks Nancy the next question from Uh AJ uh from the depth perspective, do we need to read the interviewer first for technical details?

45:58 Read the interviewer first. I believe maybe AJ can jump in. But from like a body language perspective is that what or basically do you have advice on how to gauge how deep to go on technical details? Uh unless it is a technical interview which you should know uh assuming they tell you in advance I wouldn't go very deep into the technical details especially for L6 and above. Right.

46:30 Okay. Yeah. And next question from Oh my god. I hope we don't pronounce it wrong. Susan. Susan. I know how to pronounce it. Hey lady. Hi ladies. Uh it's just to clear out the error. It's Suzanne. Suzanne. Hi. Okay. Now you all could rest easy tonight. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Said, "I love your framework, your delivery, your tone. My concern is am I taking too long to answer? Does deep going deeper annoy the hiring manager? Uh so I have a spicy take on this. A lot of people think that being concise equals being short. Uh but conciseness and shortness are two different things. Uh what actually matters more is and I'm going to use Wes Ko's words is the density of the information that you're providing and the econ economy of words. And also, people assume that time is linear. But when they're really bought into the story, time goes by faster. And we know this. And so it has to do with your energy level, the way you're framing it.

47:39 If you're bought into the story yourself, the energy is going to come across and they'll more likely resonate with the story if you're bought in to begin with. Uh, but you want to also because it's a conversation at the end of the day, you want to do your best in helping them actually lean in and if they resonate with the problem that you're having, they'll more likely continue to lean in and pay more attention to the actions that you tell them afterwards. Thank you for that. And I too love West. Great. Or does everyone know who that is by the way? Wes Cow, the founder Maven. Mhm. That's that um Nancy referenced. Yes. Okay. And um I think you answered this. Leanne said, "This is so valuable. I would love to see some examples of stronger answers versus weaker ones." And you I actually have a lot of examples on my LinkedIn.

48:37 Um and here's what I could do. I could as a follow-up email. I could point you to what those LinkedIn posts are. Uh, I have posts on what it means to speak strategically versus operationally. I have a post on answers for uh, L6 versus L7. So, I'll put those in an email afterwards. Yes. And definitely get on NY's email list. She has tons of amazing content on answers like this. Stronger answers versus weaker ones in her emails.

49:11 She doesn't send fluff BS emails. She just sends like really good stuff. Oh, thanks. Okay. And so, next question. Ronnie asked, um, "Nobody wants to interview me right now for AIPM roles." So, even if I reach genius zone of communication with your help, that might not move the needle for me. What are your response to that? Yeah, and that's fair. So my zone of genius is in communication skills and AC interviews which is lower funnel in the job search funnel not the top of funnel. Um I don't consider myself an expert in networking and getting more interviews. But what would what I would say is that most people when they try to network they don't pay attention to whether they're actually um trying to give back in return. They only ask for, "Oh, can can I get on a quick call? I'm only take I only want to take something away from you versus here's what I could give you in return." So, when the thing that I recommend for my clients is that you want to do your best in offering value instead of just taking value when you're networking.

50:27 Okay, thanks Nancy. And next question. Pavan asked, "How many stories do folks normally prepare for L6 plus interviews?" Um, 10 to 20. Then the uh folks in my program, I help them review 20 of their stories, a lot. That's awesome to know. Okay. And then lippy question in the example you shared. I like the fact that the hook was the abstract framing of the challenge very succinctly. Um or actually maybe it's not a question but that said I had expected to lead with um impact in the hook.

51:14 Yes, that's one approach. Uh but impact in terms of raw number actually doesn't really resonate because you're talking to someone who does not have a lot of context. And so you could throw out numbers and say 100% or 200% increase or $5 million in revenue, but that number is not going to resonate emotionally with the interviewer because they don't come from your world. And so my approach and my recommendation is to not lead with that level of impact. And also that impact is onedimensional. It's for one project. What you what I recommend for L6 and above is that the spicy take and your bluff bottom line up front is actually really wide. So that covers more range compared to just here's the impact that I drove for this one particular project. You want to go wide before you go deep, which is T-shaped communication.

52:11 Oh, I love that. Yes. Show that you're a big thinker. Okay, next question from Shohei and Mary and Muse also had plus this question. Would framing help for roles where you don't have direct experience such as applying for group PM roles even though you've never had a direct report? Uh framing helps regardless of how senior you are. And the framing that I use for this discussion is the success formula, right? Start with the clarity and then you take the right actions and then put in the time to take those right actions.

52:48 That's an example of framing. You could apply it across the board across levels. Yeah. So I guess yeah maybe another way of framing Shi's question is like how whether or not one has had direct reports um how could they leverage how they position themselves like the Yeah. like the signal that capability even though you don't have like direct experiences.

53:20 Uh so when you don't have direct experiences, you want to get really clear on why you think you could why you think you have the competencies. So if you don't have leadership experience, why do you think you could lead? That's the framing. Fair. Thanks. And even in your example that you gave Nancy, like speaking about the organizational and cultural alignment needed, that speaks to someone who has high EQ, right? And would be a good manager of direct reports. Yeah. So you first So in some in terms of framing, you could say, well, a good leader would probably do X in this situation.

54:13 which is still in a hypothetical sense. But it shows your capabilities in your your highle thinking. Yeah. Your perspective. Yeah. Okay. Thanks. So then next question from Ash and Mary. Um should we have a stock set of stories prepared or should we be able to tailor our stories on the fly? Maybe related to that 20. Yeah, you want well you want to first get really clear on first principles that you have leveraged across all the different projects that you have led whether they're leadership principles or product principles they're different um and in reality you probably don't need to prepare stories about more than five different projects I think five is a maximum but every project is multi-dimensional and So even though it's 20 different stories there, you're still just talking about the five projects but from different angles.

55:18 Could you give an example of a first principle? Uh well the example that I used in today's session is if we don't lean into transforming how businesses harness AI, we risk irrelevance. Right? That's an example of a product principle. Leadership principle is actually very easy to find because you could just pull up Amazon's uh leadership principles and you could leverage those. But product principles are more a lot more specific to your product strategy and product decisions.

55:57 for me. Um, here's another product principle that I leveraged heavily in my last role, which is we would never satisfy user sentiment with ads revenue. That's when I was working on a homepage for Roku. That is an example of a first principle. It's first uh first principle, but in the product lens, not leadership lens. It is basically a belief that you hold or a belief that you got the organization to hold along with the project. For us, we would always choose user sentiment even though ads revenue is bread and butter for Roku being a advertising platform.

56:39 So you help clients get clear on their own personalized tailored right first principles and then tailor that to their answers. What makes it hard is that you probably can't really articulate it very clearly, but you would know what the principles are. And I cannot make up a principle for my clients, but I could help them wordsmith it. And they could give me examples on how they made certain product decisions or why they created strategy a certain way and then I could help them articulate the principle.

57:13 You pull out those hidden gems out of their brain. Right. Thank you, Christie. That's what coaches do. That's why I love coaching. You have all the good stuff in you. We bring out the gold. Yes, we surface it. Yeah. Um, okay. So, Jesse, I guess related to I had a question. How do you It's maybe this answered it, but how do you help yourself identify the 20 stories to prepare? Are there questions you ask clients or yourself? Should you try to include variety? Well, there's a lot of inter interview interview questions floating around on the internet. Um, I have one that I uh I listed as one of the free resources which I believe this um QR code will uh point you to. Uh Lenny's podcast has Lenny has a article where he interviewed a lot of different product leaders and asked them for their favorite interview questions. That's a good resource too. Um, generally speaking though, you want to get really clear on your five projects that you want to talk about, including the principles that you had when you made those decisions and why you did the things that you did and kind of just really focus on the quality of those five projects. Make sure you could talk about the strategy. Make sure you could talk about the org dynamic. make sure you could talk about um why you made certain product decisions and the people issues surrounding these five different projects.

58:49 Okay. And so next question from Analie, what is the difference between product principle and hypothesis? Um product principle is not necessarily a hypothesis. So for example, the principle that I used when I was working on homepage was we would never um we would never affect decrease user sentiment and increase ads revenue. It's not a hypothesis.

59:19 Uh it's a belief that ad revenue is less important than user sentiment like an operating or personal operating principle in a way. But yeah, it's kind of like if I could dumb it all the way down. So my household runs on first principles. One is for my kid, no TV after 9:00 p.m. That's a principle. It's a belief. It's not a hypothesis. It's just we believe that this is the right thing to do and we're going to follow it.

59:53 Whereas, do you want to give a hypothesis example? Just as a hypothesis is if my kid watches TV after 9, she's going to she's going to turn into a rascal the next day. That's a hypothesis. Can you give like a product hypothesis, like an experiment? Okay. uh if if I optimize for ads revenue at the expense of user sentiment, it actually has long-term impact that will not benefit the business and then you do an experiment or experiments to test that. Well, sometimes it's not very easy to test long-term hypothesis unless you want to have a really long-term hold out, which you can too, but the principle is more of a long-term belief.

60:42 Sarah said she uh she thinks of that as like a design principle and loves that. Yeah, it's very similar to design principles. And so Pan asks, so principles equals distillation of your experience. Principle equals why did you make your decision the way you did? Like your guiding north star. Mhm. Yeah. So here's also a very good exercise. When you go for product reviews with executives, most people would kind of just take their feedback and implement the feedback. But what you can do to get really good at distilling principle is to guess what principles they're leveraging when they gave you the advice. I'll give you an example.

61:31 uh my I used to report to a VP who really really cared about craft and quality and the principle that I later derived from all the product reviews is that he just does not want us to operate like we're in clown town. Are those your words? No, that's his words. Very astute of you. Yeah. Yeah. So like clown town like we cannot be clowns. We just need to be very polished and even when let's say adding some kind of polish or delightful feature doesn't really move any metrics like he doesn't care. He just cares about craft because he does not want us to be in clown town. That's a principle. Okay. So, I think we have time for one more question. Um, Lillian asks, "I'm curious when when you were an interviewer, what's an interviewer question that would be the most telling and what cues indicators do you look for that tells you a candidate would be a good fit versus a bad fit?" Uh, well, I am largely biased and influenced by the meta culture because I spent six, six years there. Uh the question that Meta really loves to ask is to come come at you from different angles around your weaknesses, the worst feedback, worst conflict you've had, worst manager you've had. These are just all the different questions that are kind of in the negative scenario. And those are the those are the stories that are the most telling. So, I actually don't spend a lot of time asking about projects that you're the most proud in because that doesn't really give me any signals. What I really want is the negative situations or maybe the most challenging. Is that a better reframing? I'm all about positivity is in my zone of genius. So, um yeah. Yes.

63:43 So if you're if the if the prompt is challen the most difficult challenge then it really has to be very very difficult and you have to get really clear on why it was so difficult and then I might prompt you twice or three times to see if you can articulate the difficulty and if it's if it doesn't feel difficult then I'm going to question your seniority. Wait, how do you gauge that? By how much they suffered or by the complexity? No, not necessarily.

64:19 It's what makes the situation so ambiguous and so hard. And the reason why I use it to gauge uh levels and seniority is because we don't give hard problems to more junior uh prof leaders. Yeah. We give the really hard problems to the more senior leaders. [Music] Okay, thanks. Oh, sorry. One question popped up. Do you have time for one more from Okay, go ahead. Can you use the fact that you couldn't help a staff member succeed out of their PIP?

65:00 But why do I have to help a staff member succeed out of their PIP? So, Nancy, it's Suzanne. Um, hi Suzanne. I was just thinking like, you know, like some of the failures as a director of project management. I'm not really in product, but project management. Um, obviously we've had projects that fail, but for me in my leadership role, I look at my staff and, you know, one staff just consistently stays with me. I couldn't help her get out of her pip. I really wanted her to succeed. Um, and so as a leader kind of saw that as you know my responsibility to do everything I can and I always sit back and wonder was there more I could have done for her to be successful.

65:46 I actually don't see it as the leader responsibility to help someone get out of PIP. Thank you for that therapy session. What you're responsible for is to create the conditions such that your team drives the most uh uh outcome for the company and one person being on PIP is not going to help you maximize outcome.

66:18 Okay. So I should just let that go just again therapy one uh yeah yes yes the short answer is I would let it go but you can't so anytime when the emotional brain is on and like logic goes out the window you want to redirect the emotional brain when you redirect the emotional brain you want to focus on what's more true which is what is my job as a director on this team my job is not just get the most from one person. My job is to get the most out of the entire team, right?

66:53 That's your job. Yeah. I think like you said, logically as a leader, you know that, but emotionally, you want to make sure you've done everything because I also think that the rest of the team may look at it and wonder like, oh, she wasn't a great leader. I I don't think that's the case, but you know how again, it's just that emotional brain. It's the emotional brain. Yeah. Yeah. So the the work is redirect the emotional brain. I get it.

67:20 I get it. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, ladies. Sure. Okay, Suzanne. So, Nancy, did you want to say any last words? Uh, well, hopefully this and uh this lightning lesson is fun fun for you and also insightful for you. Let me know if I could be of service. And if you want more content on this topic, I write a lot on my LinkedIn. So, make sure you you click the follow button if there's a follow button. Uh, and then my oh my next community roundtable is coming up in about two weeks. I do the community roundts every month. They are also free and it it will be more interactive than this. This one is I come prepared with a lecture. Uh, but the round table is very informal and Q&A. So, if you have more questions, come to my round table.

68:16 Thanks everyone. Oh, how do you sign up for the round table? Uh, great question. I will send it out in the link afterwards. I'm glad that you want to come, Ronnie. Okay, thank you everyone. Thank you Mary. Thank you Lillian. Thank you Dora. Thank you Adar. Thank you Richishi. Thank you, Jesse. See you soon. Bye. Bye, Nancy. I made you host, by the way. Oh, okay.

68:50 Thank you, Christina. Bye. Bye.