Whitney Wolfe Herd: Moment 98 - The One Thing All Successful Leaders Have (And You Can Too!): Whitney Wolf Herd

00:03What are you like as a leader? Because leadership has evolved, you know, over the last 10-20 years from like the Steve Jobs days where you've got this kind of tyrant that, from what I've heard, so, so hard to deal with that they put him in his own building and only people could work in that building if they were really resilient. I heard all these stories. I spoke to Woz, Woz didn't tell me that, but Woz is the closest I've ever got to Steve Jobs. But leadership and the concept of what a leader looks like and how they behave and how they treat people in a post-internet world where we have the ability to speak up because we can tweet and glass door and all of these things leadership leadership has changed uh our perceptions of it how they behave in a post-pandemic world leaders are much more vulnerable because i think a lot of them had to be really vulnerable during the pandemic to to guide their teams through what if i asked your teams if i said you know what's Whitney like as a leader? What would they say to me? Um, I feel like I try, I try. And so, you know, I'm sure I could be told otherwise. I try to be empathetic and I try to think about everyone around me, probably to my detriment, honestly. Um, I think it's probably done me

01:24more harm than good over the years because I'm trying to solve for every single person in the room that maybe it doesn't solve anything sometimes. But I really, I try to just be the brand we are externally, internally. It's hard. You know, there's so many conflicting needs as a business. You have a marketing and brand team that want to do one thing. You have a technical team that needs to do another. You have IPO teams that have to do another. And so you end up being this conductor of a very loud orchestra. And I try to create harmony with people. But I don't know. I guess I wouldn't say I follow any. I don't read leadership books. I don't take leadership courses.

02:10Maybe that's something I should do. I don't know. But I just lead with my gut. I just do what feels right. I try to do the right thing. I try to listen and hear what people are saying. And I to listen to other people too. So if one person calls me and says X, Y, or Z, I try to call the other person and say, what's your version of this? Before I jump to a conclusion, I really try to have compassion for where everybody's coming from, but it's tough. And then I also have to put my head down and say, okay, no, sometimes this is just how it's going to go, right? Because I feel like I can see certain things that maybe aren't present to everyone in the dating space, because I've been in this thing for a decade now. And I feel like I understand the nuances of it very well. So I don't know. I don't know what they would say.

03:03You talked about creating harmony amongst the orchestra, which I feel like is the perfect example of the role of a CEO. But a role of the CEO of a public company becomes even more difficult because then you have even more conflicting expectations. When you're that person that's trying to create a harmony in all of this orchestra, keep everybody happy, meet all the needs. How do you create harmony within yourself? So I personally have beliefs that, you know, there's something bigger than what we're dealing with every day, right? Like I try to zoom out, zoom out into something that we can't even see, right? There's obviously influences of the universe that none of us know about. You and I cannot sit here and say that we know every corner of why we exist and what's going to happen tomorrow. And so I try to just trust the process. I try to laugh. Andre was always really good at that. He would just laugh in really stressful situations. And I learned that from him. It's Just like have a laugh.

04:06You'll be okay. And also to realize that we are just a blip on the radar. Like this is going to be – if we're lucky, like Bumble will be like a half page in a book one day hundreds of years from now. Like it's just not that big of a deal, the daily dramas and the nuances of everything. And so I try to just zoom out. Like is this really going to still matter? this one moment in interpersonal dynamics or this one moment in a failed launch or whatever it might be? Is this really going to matter in five years? Is this going to matter in five months? And I really try to do that exercise of like, how big of a deal is this before I allow it to disrupt my harmony? Does that make sense? I don't know if that made any sense. It does make sense. It does reading things about your, your sort of sleep work routine. And you sounded a lot like me.

05:04I'm the type of person that has an, a fairly unhealthy relationship with my phone throughout, through throughout the early hours of the morning, especially, um, especially when I was running the company, especially when I was at social chain still, um, I'd wake up in the middle of the night. I was probably, I was worried too, too often when we couldn't make payroll and I knew it was payday in a week, I'd be riddled with little sort of slithers of anxiety. When we spoke to, um, I think it's Robbie.

05:29Oh yeah, he's great. Robbie and your team. Robbie said, she makes no pretense of being always strong and is openly vulnerable with the team. Well, you might walk into the office one day and let them know that you've been struggling with something. You might be anxious or struggling with anxiety that day. And encourage your other team members, if they're feeling the same way, to take the time that they need. Well, that's really nice of him. But yeah, I mean, vulnerability is, it has to be authentic.

05:57I've watched so many people the last few years ride this vulnerability trend. And I'm like, that's not real vulnerable. Like vulnerability can't be a scapegoat or an exit or a crutch. For me, I don't know. I just tell the truth. If I'm having postpartum depression back when after my first baby, I would just say that to my all hands because that was the truth. And why would I be anything other than truthful? If I want to lead a company that tells the truth and I want to run a business that instills behaviors that are truthful and healthy and better, like why would I want to operate in any way that's disingenuous to that?

06:39So I just get up and just try to tell the truth. Convention would say, well, that's not, leaders are strong and then they don't have any problems and they're always tough. and they, you know, they, you know, so what if, and this is honestly what I used to worry about. I used to think, well, if I, if I'm truly honest that things affect me too, my team are going to think I'm weak and then I can't lead them. And that's the kind of narrative that ran out in my head. Yeah. But, and I get that, but the reality is everyone's, everyone's feeling something and I'm in a connection business. How can I run a connection company if I can't connect?

07:20and the only way you can connect is through vulnerability. It's the only way to connect with anyone. I'm being very vulnerable with you right now because we're sitting here connecting. So I might as well, you know, I could sit here and be like, well, it's a business book I read, you know, there's this theory of like, you know, this many hours a day do this. And like, that's just not my vibe.