Lenny Rachitsky (00:00:00): I want to dive right into talking about your advice on having difficult conversations, where like in performance review season, what do you suggest when someone's being told they're not going to get the promotion? Alisa Cohn (00:00:10): Hope for the future is so important. I know this is going to be challenging for you to hear, not going to promote you, but I want you to know this. It's really important to me that you're able to succeed in your career here, and so I want to continue to help you find opportunities to build your skills and to advance. Lenny Rachitsky (00:00:24): You're big on helping leaders understand that their job is not to make employees happy. Alisa Cohn (00:00:29): They're trying now to be the leader who everyone loves, but what really needs to happen very often is, we need to drive towards results. This employee continuing to not really do a great job at their job, you don't want to push them because you don't want to upset them. You don't want to give them difficult feedback, so you're just going to keep hoping it works out. Ultimately, that leads to the demise of your company. Lenny Rachitsky (00:00:50): You have some cool advice on just how to make meetings more effective and how to especially end the meeting. Alisa Cohn (00:00:54): My three questions to end the meeting are... Lenny Rachitsky (00:01:00): Today my guest is Alisa Cohn. Alisa is an executive coach who has worked with C-suite execs at both startups like Etsy, Wirecutter, Venmo, and DraftKings, along with Fortune 500 companies like Microsoft, Google, Pfizer, and the New York Times. She was named one of the top 50 coaches in the world by Thinkers50 and the number one startup coach for the past four years by Global Gurus. What I love about Alisa is that she gives her clients very specific and actionable advice. In her conversation, Alisa shares specific language and phrases that you can use when having a difficult conversation with your reports to ...