I recently went one-on-one with Jared Sine, Chief Strategy & Legal Officer of GoDaddy. Jared was previously the Chief Business Affairs and Legal Officer for Match Group.
Adam: What were the keys to going from technical subject matter expert to leader?
Jared: It’s a great question. Adam, clearly, there’s a big part of it, that’s just you’re in the right place at the right time, and you have the right opportunities, and you meet the right people, and those things open doors. I had the fortunate opportunity to work for Clayton Christensen in between undergrad and law school and learn a little bit about how he thought about things. He had a consulting firm called Innosight, which was later acquired by Huron, but worked for them for about a year, and learned a lot about business and learned a lot about consulting, and learned a lot about innovation, but part of that was just being connected to Clay. He opened some doors for me. So I think that always plays a big role in it. The people that you connect with and the people that you interact with, they can’t help but put fingerprints on who you become and your career and all those kinds of things. So that was foundational, having some of those experiences, pre-law school, and then going into law school, I always had a business mind for things. And I think one of the challenges that many subject matter experts have is what Charlie Munger calls the “hammer syndrome,” where, when you are a lawyer, you see everything as risk. Or when you are a product person, you see everything as a product that needs to be built. Or when you’re a marketer, you see everything through a marketing lens, and that’s really important that you’re good at that, and you can do that well. But if you ultimately want to transition, or you ultimately want to broaden your perspective, I think it’s really important that you take a step back. One of the things I learned over my career was not just to look at things through my lens as a lawyer or a strategist or the other skill sets I’ve developed over time, but it is to try and intake the issue or the problem or the opportunity from a business lens. Really understand it, understand what the objectives are, where you’re trying to go, and then as necessary, apply that lens to the aspect of the decision or the aspect of the solution that needs to be crafted where that actually aligns or makes sense, but to make sure that you’re keeping that broader business lens, because then you can expand into other areas. You can innovate, you can be thoughtful, and I really think for not just lawyers, but candidly, any subject matter expert, if you want to expand your horizon and you want to be able to do more with your career outside of that initial area of subject matter expertise, it really is about taking that step back, having that higher perspective, knowing when to apply that subject matter expert lens, and then also knowing when not to and then together, that creates some of these opportunities for you, because you broaden your horizon. So I think that’s part of it. I think one other thing that I would say is part of it is just being intellectually curious and looking for opportunities. So I remember as a young lawyer six or seven years out, it was at Expedia at the time, and we had just acquired a company called trivago, and trivago didn’t have a legal department. And so I went to my boss and I said, “Hey, they don’t have a legal department. I’d like to be the head lawyer for trivago. I’ll make sure everybody gets connected with the right people.” And that was outside of my role at the time. I was the M&A lawyer; that was my job to go buy and sell companies, but I wanted to build out that skillset of, okay, how do I manage the day-to-day? How do I think about the other day-to-day, legal risks, and other things? How do I get embedded more in the business? And so just by having that expansive view and thinking about, hey, there’s an opportunity here. There’s some green space, I’m going to try and move into it. I did something similar at Match Group. Shortly after getting there, I realized they didn’t have a trust and safety function, and so I did a full audit of all of the trust and safety tools and systems and other things at the company. At each brand, they had different tools, they had different systems, and came up with the plan to make sure that we had a systematized approach to that. And then ultimately, I built out a team and built out a massive trust and safety function at Match Group that did a lot of great things. Then I was able to bring some of those skills here. But again, it’s those three things. I think it’s being in the right place at the right time, to a degree, with great people who see your potential and help you take advantage of it. It’s seeing the opportunities and pushing into it by not just looking at everything through that subject matter expert lens. And then finally, it is taking the green space and going after it. Those are the things that, for me, have really helped as I’ve made some of these transitions over time.
Adam: Who are the types of people that you should focus on surrounding yourself with?
Jared: People who understand and are self-aware enough to know their limitations and to see where you can provide value and where you can lean in. Two examples. One at Expedia Dara (Khosrowshahi), who’s now the CEO at Uber. One of the things I loved about Dara is he was always the smartest guy in the room, but he was also always willing and ready to understand and see where others had expertise and tease that out, and then tease more out of them as well. And so that was always a really powerful experience to me. And anytime we were pitching a deal or we were moving forward with the big M&A acquisition, just seeing Dara operate in that way was powerful. He could see the value that we brought, that we each brought, and didn’t have to be the loudest voice in the room. He ultimately knew he was the decision maker as the CEO, but wanted to make sure that the right information and everything could be brought into the conversation. Encourage people to weigh in on things that maybe were outside their subject matter expertise, just to kind of get another perspective, and I’ve seen a lot of those similar characteristics in my current CEO, Aman Bhutani. One of the reasons I wanted to come work here at GoDaddy was because he is that kind of leader. He sees the potential in people, and he pulls it out of them. I still remember we were working on a pretty interesting transaction back at Expedia when he and I were working together. We were essentially, through a commercial agreement, working to power the entirety of the Travelocity system. So Travelocity would be doing the marketing and still controlling the day-to-day with their customers, but under the covers, it was going to be everything Expedia. So it was pretty complex as we worked through the provisions of the document and other things. And I remember I had him in my office, and we’re going through a pretty complicated provision. And he looked at me and he said, “Hey, Jared, you write legal documents like I code. You are actually thinking through how this legal document can be living and breathing and can take in different inputs over time and spit out the right solution five years from now, and that’s the same way you code. And that problem-solving approach is pretty unique.” So you could see right there, Aman could see not just what I was and what I was doing in that instance, but could actually see the broader application. He has great pattern recognition and saw that he could bring it out of me. So I think those are the kinds of people that you want, people who can see not only who you are and what you can contribute today, but who you can be and what more you can bring to the table, and are willing to give you the space to do that.
The great thing about people like this, when you find them, is they’re invested in you, not just in what you can do from a business perspective or commercial perspective or whatever perspective that is on the career side. But a couple years ago, I was up in Portland. My daughter’s a soccer player, and she was training with the professional soccer team up there, and I got really sick and ended up in the hospital. I was three hours south from Seattle, and sure enough, Aman and others came down to make sure I was taken care of. You know, it’s a pretty emergency situation. I was there for three weeks. And those are the people, where they’ve invested in you, you’ve invested in them. And the relationship becomes more than just, hey, how are we going to solve this next business problem together? It is, hey, how are we going to help each other across the board? And so those relationships, they’re important. You don’t always get that in every company with every person you work with, but when you find them, they’re special, they’re rare, they’re powerful, and they help you become a better person all across the board.
Adam: You spoke about the importance of broadening your perspective and focusing on seeing issues from a broader lens, including from a business lens. How do you do that?
Jared: I think a big part of it is intellectual curiosity. Often, we get so good at what we’re doing, we just want to do that over and over and over again, because it’s easy. I could review a purchase agreement in my sleep from an M&A perspective on the legal side, because I’ve done it so many times over my career, but to have that intellectual curiosity to start saying, okay, these are the deal terms that ultimately ended up in here. Why? What were the drivers there? What were the accounting drivers? What were the tax drivers? What were the business drivers? What’s the business logic behind this? And just trying to explore and expand and understand more, and then to start asking questions. Well, was that the right decision? So this company decided to buy this company or sell this company at this purchase price because of this industrial logic, or what they called industrial logic. Was it really logical? Did it really make sense? Start asking those questions. And you just find you continue to expand your aperture over time, until suddenly you see enough of these patterns playing out. Your pattern recognition kicks in. You start saying – okay, this is going to be a good deal from a business perspective and a bad deal from a business perspective. Instead of just seeing it as okay, I need to put the right legal machinery in place. And I think as you expand that vantage point the day-to-day skillset that you have of being great at a purchase agreement or negotiating those terms becomes mundane, and you want to take on more, and you want to experience more, and you want to be more involved in what’s really driving the strategy and what’s really driving the outcome. And so I think that’s where it starts. It just starts with that constant intellectual curiosity for what’s next, what’s underlying the covers here that’s making this thing go. And as you do that, I just think, by definition, you start to understand different areas more, and then you start to develop expertise there.
Adam: What are the skills that subject matter experts need to develop to ultimately succeed as leaders, and how can they develop them?
Jared: One of the key things you need to have as a leader is, first, you’ve got to have a great appreciation for the people that work with you and around you. I think if I’m going to lead someone, I actually have to understand who that person is and care about that person if you join what we call the SEAL team here at GoDaddy, which is strategy enablement, acquisitions, and legal. That’s where SEAL comes from. It’s going to be a long and grueling interview process, and we work really hard to ensure your interview, regardless of your role, is going to end with me, because ultimately, it’s really important that you are a great person. You’re going to be a great fit. And so I think that’s one of the places that it starts as a leader, is making sure you care enough to do that extra interview or have that extra conversation, because it’s so important that the person fits and that the person is going to be successful. So I think that’s one key element, is trying to understand people and really engage with people where they are and treat them in the way they want to be treated, in the way you would expect to be treated. So I think that’s an important element of leadership. Second, it’s important that you want to invest in these people. You want to see them grow, and you want to see them develop. I think so often people hire people in order to fit a certain role or to fit a certain job function, and that’s important. But I think it’s also important that you see who they can become, and you start investing in that to help them develop and to help them grow. I think as a leader, you want to find people, at least from my perspective, who are reliable and dependable. I’m not doing it right if I’m not getting 90 to 95% leverage out of that individual, meaning I only have to weigh in on 5% of the decisions at the end of the day, they are autonomous, and they have the room to roam and the room to do the things that they need to do, and that they’re trained up to a degree that they can really operate autonomously. I think that’s rewarding for people, and ultimately, those are the kind of people I want on my team. People who want that freedom and want that ability to have that level of delegated responsibility. I think it’s also important to be really self-aware about what you’re good at and what you’re not good at, and hiring people who are really good at those things that you’re not good at or that you don’t like doing, because ultimately, the people who think they do everything perfectly are just not self-aware enough. And so I really try and find people who have different skillsets than I have, or have different interests than I have, or have different backgrounds than I have, because if you have group think, or if we’re all good at the same thing, or if we all see the issue the same way, you’re never going to get to the right outcome. Bring in great people who are excellent at what they do, bring in people who have potential, and you’re investing in and then giving them room to roam, and ultimately, having people that see the world maybe a little bit differently than you are. I think together, they get the open room to roam that they need, and I can guide them and steer them as we go. That’s how I think about leadership. If you value people for who they are and give them room, they grow and they flourish.
Adam: What pitfalls should subject matter experts need to look out for as they transition into leadership roles, and how can they navigate them?
Jared: So one is, if you’re a subject matter expert, one of the challenges you’re always going to have, one of the pitfalls you have to avoid is ending up getting pigeonholed. There are places that you’ll work or people that you’ll work with who, regardless of where you move toward or the skillset that you demonstrate, they’re only going to see you as your title. So whether that’s a lawyer, they’ll just see you as a lawyer, and they’ll come to you for legal advice, and no matter how much additional information you provide, or how well you demonstrate that you can help on a business issue or other things, they’re only ever going to see you in that light as that lawyer. And so sometimes, if you get pigeonholed like that, the only way to grow is to try your hand somewhere else. So that’s one of the things you have to really try hard to avoid, if you can, is to avoid getting pigeonholed by demonstrating those additional skills that you have and by demonstrating that you can add value in these other places. I think that’s really important. I think it’s important to avoid organizational bias, meaning that you, in your subject matter expert role, view what you’re doing from an organizational perspective is far more important or far more interesting than other things, because that’ll show, that’ll come out in your conversations with people. Again, you’ll end up seeing everything as a nail for a legal hammer or for a product hammer. And ultimately, if you’re doing that, it’s going to be really hard to expand and really hard to grow. The other thing is, if you’re not careful and you’re not thoughtful about when you weigh in and how you weigh in, you might actually end up hurting your growth and your progression by weighing in in the wrong context or the wrong way, in an area that you don’t fully understand. And so I think it’s important that before you speak in some of these areas, do your homework, you’ve really researched, you’ve done your learning, so that you can weigh in, and you’re not going to get it right every time, but at least 80-90% of the time, you’re getting it right, so that way you’re not undermining that credibility that you’re trying to build. I see really often young lawyers who want to weigh in on a business issue, or young marketers who want to weigh in on a broader issue outside of marketing, and they just don’t have the background or the pattern recognition or the experience, and they weigh in, and unfortunately, it comes across as okay, this person’s way out over their skis. We have to be careful. That’s where it’s really important to have that balance of doing the pre-work, so that when you’re weighing in, it’s actually impactful and it’s pushing in the right direction. So I think those are some of the pitfalls to be careful of, avoid getting siloed, avoid organizational bias, where you’re looking at everything through the wrong lens, and then make sure that if you’re gonna weigh in, your perspective is informed.
Adam: What are the keys to delegating successfully?
Jared: Delegation is something that is ultimately earned. So one of the things that I find is when I hire somebody to start, you have a sense, unless you’ve worked with them before, you have a sense of their skillset through the interview process, but you don’t really know. And so I end up spending a lot more time with those new individuals out of the chute, and I end up looking at a lot more of whatever they’re working on in order to understand where their strengths are, where their weaknesses are, in practice, as opposed to just on paper, from when we were doing the interviews over time. As you train them and develop them, you let go more and more and more until you get to a stage where they’re pretty much running the show. Now, I do think it is important that even as you’re going through that training process and getting them to a place where you can delegate and again, because delegation comes from trust, I think it’s important that you give them room to make sure that they feel like they can voice their opinion, and make sure that they feel like they can spread their wings a little bit. But I do think that training period is really important for some people, that’s a couple of months. For some people, that’s much longer. But ultimately, from my perspective, delegation is critical because I can’t do what I need to do across all the various functions that I have if I’m in every single detail of every single decision that needs to be made. It goes back to hiring great people that are willing to invest in helping them grow, and then giving them more, and then you can pull up and you can do more. So I think that’s the process I go through every time with a new employee, as I’m allowing them to take on more than as I’m delegating more.
Adam: What are your best tips on the topic of peer-to-peer delegation?
Jared: This is a really important topic, and I think it’s one that people don’t think about as much. I think when you are, like I was starting out, when you’re a lawyer in an organization, you don’t really have a team, but you have to have influence across the organization, and you have to be able to execute multi-billion-dollar acquisitions. This is an area where you have to get really good at understanding how you use persuasion, how you use influence, all those things in order to make sure that you’re delegating tasks, sometimes to your peers and sometimes to your superiors, because ultimately, a big M&A deal is not going to get done by one person. It has to be done by a team. And so this is one of those areas where understanding the needs of the other members of the team, understanding the bandwidth that they have, understanding the skillset that they have, and then making sure that the pieces of whatever project, (in this case we’re talking about acquisitions), that they have a good understanding and can run with it and understand how important their piece is to the ultimate outcome. And I think one of the ways to do that, that I found successful as I’ve moved more and more into leadership in my career, is setting up strong operating mechanisms, what we call OpMechs (short for operating mechanisms), here at GoDaddy, having strong processes and playbooks and OpMechs, where it’s really clear what the roles and responsibilities are. And so if you’re a strategy leader on our team and you’re trying to get the corporate strategy done for 2026 there’s an operating mechanism that we’ve got in place that the various members of the team understand what it is, and the various members of the business units understand what it is, and so everybody understands their role, and as a result, it makes that peer to peer delegation much more seamless and work much better. But if you don’t have that, a lot of it’s going to come down to your ability to persuade, your ability to influence, your ability to help people understand the value of what they’re contributing and the impact that they can have by contributing in this way. So ultimately, if you can get to a place where you have solid OpMechs for the various types of work that you’re doing across the organization, that can be a game changer. And I think what’s going to be really interesting is delegation is going to take on a whole new meaning as we bring agents into the workforce and other things that AI is opening up. So that’s an exciting thing to start thinking about, is how to leverage those tools alongside the human capital and other resources we have to just amplify what we can do and increase our productivity significantly.
Adam: How can leaders leverage those tools to more effectively delegate?
Jared: You’ve got to get curious again. Artificial Intelligence, in some form, has been around for a long time, but in the form we’re talking about today, in the generative AI and the Agentic AI building companions, all those kinds of things. It’s a new frontier, and it’s an exciting frontier. And so I think the first step today is to get curious. It’s interesting. Part of our legal team, which I think most people would say, wow, legal is using Agentic AI. We have part of our legal team that’s building a marketing agent right now. They’d already built a marketing companion where, effectively, you could come as a marketer and say, hey, here’s the claim that I’m thinking of using. It would give you feedback on the claim. It would tell you if the claim, from a legal perspective, had pitfalls or other things, and could clear the claim if it was basic enough. Well, they’re taking that concept now, and they’re turning that into an agent that will be even more helpful to our marketers, that this task of weighing in on marketing claims and other marketing matters can be fully delegated to an agent unless it gets into certain complex types of marketing claims or other things. And it really just started with curiosity. Members of the team got excited about AI and said, okay, well, I’m going to play around with it and see how it works. I’m going to build a RAG, and then I’m going to build a full companion, and now we’re going to build an agent. And so I think as you think about delegation to these new technological tools, I think the first thing you have to identify is, okay, how do I use them? How do I get creative with them? And then it is okay, what are the functions, or what are the tasks that are really straightforward for these types of tools to take on and then slowly experiment on it and innovate on it to push that up further the transom? And again, I think that’s what you’ve seen, just using the legal team as an example. We’ve got a similar agent being built for strategic partnerships. To help a team to evaluate strategic partnerships. And so it’s fun to see it catching fire, but it really starts with getting in there, understanding what the technology can do, playing around with it, learning about it, and then experimenting and innovating until you get to a place where you’ve got something that is really adding value, and then experiment some more.
Adam: Are there other best practices you recommend when it comes to peer-to-peer delegation?
Jared: One of the things that’s really important in peer-to-peer delegation that I would share is building a relationship of trust with your peers, and sometimes that actually comes in the form of finding low-hanging fruit or finding things that they need solved so you can solve that for them. And then the next time that you need something from them and you need to delegate something to them, they understand that, hey, you’re in this with them. You’ve solved their problems in the past, and now they’re there to help solve your problem, which is ultimately a company problem, but I think that’s an important tip, is making sure you’re building good relationships and leaning in and diving in with your peers, because, again, if they see you doing that, the likelihood that when you need to delegate to them, them going to be available goes way up. Relationships are just that important. They help you define your career. They help you become who you can become. And then they give you opportunities to help others do that. They help you expand your ability to get things done. I can’t overstate the importance of relationships and how fundamental that is to becoming successful. No one does it alone. So that’s where relationships are really important. And if you have a good understanding of that, it weaves through all these things we’re talking about.
Adam: Clearly, a pitfall to look out for in peer-to-peer delegation is delegating without having a relationship in place and without having trust in place. Are there other pitfalls to be aware of, and if so, how can they be avoided?
Jared: Clearly, relationships and trust are important. I think pitfalls you have to be wary of is oftentimes you delegate something, and then you just expect it to get done, and the deadline comes, and it’s not done. I think follow up is a really important part of delegation, having the right touch points and having the right check ins, whether it’s a M&A deal and you’ve got the investment bankers working on something, or you’ve got the lawyers working on something, having those regular touch points, those regular check ins to make sure that, number one, they know that they’re accountable, and number two, that they know that you’re there if they’re running into challenges, roadblocks or other things, is really important. I think oftentimes people forget about that piece. Being a leader doesn’t mean you just send something off into the ether and then hope it comes back on time and the way you need it, it really is about being there and being present and making sure that you’re following up and making sure that they know you’re there and you’re willing to think through difficult issues or whatever else it might be. I think that’s one of the major pitfalls with delegation. I think the other pitfall that often happens is underestimating either the challenge that you’re putting on someone’s plate or underestimating the skillset that someone has. I think sometimes, when you give somebody a task that maybe is well beneath where they are, that task doesn’t get their best attention, and it’s not something that they’re focused on. So, really understanding how that thing that you need done matches up with the person or the peer that you’re working with to try and get it done. So I think that’s also really important.
Adam: How can peer-to-peer feedback be executed most effectively?
Jared: There are lots of systems that people use to do peer-to-peer feedback. You do your 360 reviews every six months, those kinds of things. I think one of the best ways to get peer-to-peer feedback is to just have open dialogue and open discourse on a regular basis, asking people, hey, at the end of a project, how did that go? What are the things that I could have done better? What are the things that I could have come in and supported you more? And then having that dialog so that you can then share with them as well. I really think real-time feedback is important, and I think it’s a sign of good leadership. Leaders who sit there and let people effectively drown, so to speak, without knowing that they’re drowning, is one of the cruelest things that a leader can do. I think great leaders are the ones who are leaning in and giving feedback regularly and often, and that can be to one of your direct reports, but equally important, it should be to your peers. And so you see those relationships on the team where people are willing and open to give each other that direct feedback to do it in real time, those become the best relationships, and those working relationships tend to churn out the most fruit. If your team’s not comfortable doing that, one of the exercises you can do is, next time you get your team together, have an open feedback session. We did one of those recently with our leadership team on SEAL, head of strategy, or head of strategic partnerships, or head of corporate development, or heads of legal and government affairs. And we all got in a room and listed the things that each one of us are doing well, and listed the things that we could work on, and had an open dialogue about it right there, transparently, and the trust you could see building through the exercise was powerful. Now you have to do it in the right way and set the context the right way, but making sure that people feel like they have a safe space to be able to share feedback so that they can get better and understand that the point is – I’m giving you this feedback not because I’m trying to hurt your career, hurt where you’re going, I’m giving you this feedback because I see your potential. I know where you can go, and if you just make a tweak here, a tweak there, you can go so much further.
Adam: Jared, you bring up a really important point, which is that most people are scared of giving honest feedback because of the potential repercussions, whether they’re real repercussions or perceived repercussions. And giving feedback isn’t that easy. It’s not a comfortable conversation. And to get to that place, for many of us, requires creating a safe environment. It requires creating a culture that empowers everyone to show up as their most open, honest selves without any fear of repercussion. How can that kind of culture be cultivated?
Jared: Again, it starts with relationships, like I talked about. That’s one of the reasons I actually think it’s really important for me. As people are coming in the door, I make it a point to try and interview everyone that comes through the door. Now, sometimes people are moving too fast, and I don’t get every single person interviewed, but it’s important that they know from the outset that I care enough to want to know who they are and how they perform and what they think, that I’m willing to take that time. So I think that’s important to building relationships again and putting that investment in. And then I think it’s important to demonstrate that you’re willing to allow people to critique you. I think too often leaders want to be the ones critiquing. For example, when we did this exercise, the person we started with was me, because I think it’s important that, as a leader, we lead by example. So it was important for me that we started with me, because once people could see that they could give me feedback, then it becomes a lot easier to be able to give each other feedback. But I do think a big piece of it, too, is making sure you set the stage well, that you tell people that, hey, feedback is essential to helping you be successful. It’s not about failure. We’re all going to make mistakes. We’re all going to mess up, but it’s what we do with those that help us grow. And I think one of the nice things we have here at GoDaddy is we have this concept of our monthly business reviews and other things. We do have this concept of good, bad, and ugly. There are things that you’re doing that are good, they’re things that you’re doing that are bad, meaning they didn’t go well, and they’re done. And what can we learn from them in order to grow? Then you have the things that are ugly, the things that we’re struggling with that are not done yet, and how are we going to solve it and turn it around and get it going in the right direction? And the reality is, if everything is in that good category, then it means you’re not really growing, you’re not progressing. And so you need enough things in the bad and enough things in the ugly to demonstrate that, hey, there are things we can work on and things we can improve. Because if, as a leader, there’s nothing left to improve upon, well, you’ve done your job, and maybe you’re not needed anymore, because you’re not pushing people hard enough to find ways to continue pushing themselves and growing. And so I think by building those kinds of things into the culture, by helping people understand that it’s okay that something’s not going perfectly, as long as we can figure out how to solve it, that opens up that culture of, hey, okay, I can make a mistake and I can get feedback, and as long as I’m working on it and innovating and improving, positive things can come out of it. So a lot of times, we’ll call some of the uglies, beautiful uglies, because at the end of the day, it’s something that we’re identifying, that if we just tweak a thing or two, it goes from being something that’s not working to something that can actually be working really well and turn into great results for us. That’s Aman, so I’m not going to take the credit, but it’s part of building the culture.
The other thing that’s really important, I try to do this with my teams, and it’s always harder when you’re new, is you come into a place like GoDaddy, and you’re making changes and trying to build that trust at the same time, and that can be really hard. But one of the things I try to make sure my team knows is at the end of the day, if there’s a mistake made, it’s ultimately on me. I remember a couple years ago at a different company, I had a team member who had a team member that was working on a big project, and the project was supposed to help make the legal team and the finance team work much better together and more seamlessly. And ultimately, the person who was supposed to be working on it actually had not been working on the project at all. And we joined this meeting with the CFO, and we’re trying to show the progress, and there really isn’t any to be shown. And my direct report was pretty nervous that, hey, what’s Jared going to do, is he going to throw me under the bus? Ultimately, I took it and said, hey, look, this is on me. We’re not where we need to be, we’ll get it right together but the buck stops here. The buck stops with me. And so if there’s fault because we weren’t successful, that’s my fault. And if I didn’t put you in a position to be successful, or if I didn’t follow up in the right way to help you be successful, some of that blame comes back on me, if not all of it. And so at the end of the day, I think that’s an important quality for a leader. They have to be willing to understand that the buck stops with you, and if things don’t go right, it’s because you didn’t make sure that they went right.
Adam: Are there any other best practices to follow or pitfalls to avoid when it comes to peer-to-peer feedback?
Jared: I think sometimes people believe that I’m just being candid or I’m just being honest, and that it makes it an okay preface to say whatever you want to say. And so I think it’s important when you’re giving feedback to someone that the feedback is constructive, meaning that it’s intended to lead to a positive outcome. If you’re giving feedback just to tear someone down or just to tell them that they’ve done a terrible job, I’m not sure that that feedback is very useful.
But if you’re going to give feedback, it’s because you care and because you want to invest and because you want to help somebody get better. And so I think when you’re giving feedback, that’s got to be the intent. If your feedback is just to tear them down and tell them they’re awful, then you might as well separate and go your separate ways, because you’re not really invested in making that person better, and so it’s not really feedback from my perspective. So I think that’s an important pitfall to avoid and make sure you’re approaching feedback as truly feedback, which is giving them information that will help them get better, not giving them information that makes them feel hopeless. So I think that’s really important. And again, that goes back to having a good relationship with people. They understand that you’re coming from a positive intent, but you have to make sure that you’re coming from a positive intent as well. And then I think the other thing I talked about earlier is just making sure it’s in real time. Giving somebody feedback six months after the situation has transpired and resolved is not going to help them. They’ve probably repeated the same mistake four times since then, because you didn’t give them the feedback at the right time, right when they needed it. So I think those are two pitfalls. One, the feedback comes too late. Or two, the feedback isn’t really feedback, it’s more an attack.
