# Systematizing Leadership: Psychology for Tech Executives

**Podcast:** Tech Lead Journal
**Published:** 2026-02-23

## Transcript

I see a lot of people that become a tech lead, they have this old belief that I'm just not that good at the people stuff.
Let me focus on the tech and the and the details, but it's a little bit of a lie.
Today's guest is Martine Verstake, founder of Group Effort.
With a background in organizational psychology, he's built a community of 300 plus CTOs and engineering leaders, teaching them the systems behind human behavior.
Many people assume that dealing with people is hard.
So tell us more about learning from these systems.
Actually, the way of doing every psychology thing, they all have systems.
As a tech lead, you were already good at using systems.
I will tell you there's a stack overflow of psychology and how you can access it.
You also have peer coaching groups with other engineering leaders.
Maybe tell us top challenges that engineering leaders are facing.
Interestingly enough, I was expecting the CTO groups to be extremely technical, but it's all about people.
The conflict management always kind of like the top challenges, especially if you're new to management, right?
Before you are a leader, it's pretty good tactic not to get into conflict.
But this is one of these transformations we have to go through.
Here's the one for bad news.
Within 10 seconds, bad news out.
If you just skip around the topic, the other person, their bullshit detectors are already bing bing bing bing bing bing bing.
Then separate it from the person as much as you can.
One other challenge that I find most of the tech leaders cannot let go.
No, but it will be quicker if I just do it.
If you ever catch yourself thinking that, no, it's always a lie.
I had a founder CTO who was struggling with this very much, and at one point he just saw I'm the bottom egg.
So his quote was also amazing, and that was if only I can do it, I should not do it.
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Thanks for being here, and let's get back to it.
Hello everyone, welcome back to another new episode of the Tech Legional podcast today.
So his name is Martin Verstick.
But today we are going to talk a lot more about you know how engineering leader can become a much better, you know, leader, putting aside not just the technical aspects, but also the product uh aspects so that you know they can grow the organization, they can grow the team, and they get they can grow themselves much better.
So Martin, thank you so much for your time.
Welcome to the show.
Thank you so much.
I look forward to this a lot because I think leadership in tech it can make such an impact on a company, right?
So uh I I love how you're doing this.
It's what I've listened to, it's always like it's both useful for aspiring leaders and for people who are in the business long time.
So congrats on that.
And uh can't wait to see if I can contribute.
Yeah, looking forward for this conversation as well.
So, Martin, uh, maybe if you if you know, right?
So, I always love to invite my guests first to share a little bit more about yourself, specifically by sharing career turning points that you think we can learn from you.
Yes, I prepared this question, and I decided that the best answer to the turning points is that I prefer to name none.
But I will give an intro, and I will tell you exactly why.
Because what I've found is specifically in tech leaders, there is always this need for more knowledge, more knowledge, more knowledge.
But then sometimes we make things so big, just like a ticket gets too big, that we kind of don't stop go into action.
So, one of the things that I found was if I name a career turning point that I was head coach of Singapore rowing team in 2020 13.
You might think, but I haven't been that, so this is not relevant to me.
Or if I say a turning point is when I started multiple peer groups across Europe.
You might think, but I haven't done that, so maybe this doesn't apply to me.
So I would say one lesson that I think is super relevant is in code, you guys are great at this.
You already know it's all about iteration and small steps.
Do the same for your personal growth.
So I will give you my two-minute intro, but I I don't think it's about one point that made the difference.
For me, it was all the steps that made the journey happen.
Oh, this is quite unique.
Uh yeah, yeah, this is quite unique sharing.
So I love the way that you mentioned um in life, it's all about small steps, it's about iteration, right?
So, yeah, sometimes the big career turning points or turning points achievements that people see uh that we see from people out there, right?
It's actually uh it's kind of like a culmination uh result of hard work effort and a lot of experiments that they did along the way.
So I think thanks for sharing uh that uh perspective and for reminding us about this importance of you know finding your own ways, your own current turning points.
Yeah.
So I would be happy to still give an intro, right?
Because I don't want to remain a stranger.
Shall I do that?
Is that okay?
Yeah, yeah.
Cool.
Okay, so my background is in organizational psychology combined with computer science science as a minor.
So I'm in between the middle ground of the people stuff and the tech stuff.
Don't ask me to review your code, but I'm very happy to have an in-depth discussion, whether that is about hallucinations of an LLM or whether it's about what vectors to use in your recommender model in data science.
I I like the tech, I can go along quite far, but I'm not writing or reading code.
I've been described by other people like your listeners as Omer Time.
Yeah, he speaks nerd, but he doesn't uh read or write it, which I think uh is what you can expect from me.
And this is also what I hope to contribute because I've I've led multiple technology organizations, and I find that the value I can bring is on the psychology side, and the problem that is also there.
That's why I'm super excited to be here because I see a lot of people that become a tech lead, they have this old belief that I'm just not that good at the people stuff.
Let me focus on the tech and the and the details.
But it's a little bit of a lie because there is actually the way of doing every psychology thing, people thing right.
They all have systems.
As a tech lead, whether you're still aspiring or already that for a long time, you were already good at using systems.
So I hope that in this talk with Henry, we can talk about systems.
Systems for talking for handling conflict.
I will tell you there's a stack overflow of psychology and how you can access it, and I'll try to get you other insights that you can actually use.
That's my core goal.
So let's try to take it from there.
Yeah.
Whoa, I I like that your background is actually uh organization psychologists, right?
So, because a lot of things we can learn from psychology that can be applied to organization team building, right, and also leadership.
And specifically just now, you mentioned something that I find very interesting because so many tech leaders, you know, tech practitioners out there, they they actually aspire to become a much better person, a much better tech leaders.
Um, maybe growing into a more engineering leaders kind of a position, but they somehow feel stuck now, maybe in their mindset in terms of opportunity or in terms of knowledge.
So let's ask dive deep here first.
Because um, you mentioned that this can be learned.
There's a system that uh everyone can find and learn from them from those resources and become better, right?
But I think many people assume that dealing with people is hard, dealing with people is abstract and ambiguous.
So tell us more about this learning from these systems.
Let's do this.
So, first of all, I'll finish my background because I won't I didn't do that because I want so much to give value that I sometimes don't shine the spotlight on myself.
I had my own education technology startup, scaled it up, sold it after five years.
Then I started doing groups for tech and product leaders.
It started as a group for myself because I felt like why am I the only one figuring out it out?
Which ties perfectly into the question that I'm gonna answer that Henry just asked, and I also find that uh after those groups it was working so great that it became kind of a community.
So currently I'm working with let's say 300 product and tech leaders across Europe, some of them at in conferences, some of them in training, some of them in peer groups, uh, and even some uh one-on-one coaching, which is very limited now.
There, I teach these systems.
So, one of the systems I want to talk about is there's actually a pretty good predictor of human behavior, and I can summarize it in three minutes if you're okay with this.
There is only a certain amount of needs, and this transcends culture.
There's a couple of needs that every person has, and those needs are I'll tell them one by one.
One is people like to know what's gonna happen next.
You could call it certainty, you could call it stability.
I'll provide a link to a to a written-out version.
Then, if people know what's gonna happen next, what happens if that's the only thing they have?
You'll get bored.
So, we also have a certain need for variety.
Then thirdly, if we get variety and stability right, we also all want to grow or at least perceive we're growing.
I'm assuming that you're listening to this podcast to find something, and I'm assuming even for Henry, part of this might be I want to keep growing, so I'll just interview people.
So that's growth.
After growth, you have status.
It is interestingly enough for everyone in the world, it's a common thing.
We like to have a certain amount of status.
Some of us are humble and feel pretty okay with a status that is not like that fits that fits in an in a normal size room.
Some like Elon needs so much that other people think you are pretty crazy.
Um, but it's a need, and then there is the need for connection.
We want to relate to others, and the last need is giving.
That's why it feels so good to teach a junior how to do code better.
So all of these are steered by just two things, and I'm I'm hoping to discuss this in depth after, but but I just wanted to give the whole model.
It's a subjective scale, it is a model.
I can get more stability and less stability, but my experience could be rated from a zero to a 10.
Thing is, even if Henry and me compare compare, maybe my 10 is Henry's five, or the other way around.
So this model works when you ask the perspective of the person you're testing this with.
You can ask, where are you?
What is your current experience?
How stable do you feel?
How much variety do you experience?
How much growth?
How much status?
How much connection?
How much giving?
I found this.
I I started using this very intensively around COVID when I was an agile coach for a company that just said, keep our people.
That's the most important.
Take care of my people.
And we use this, and it was a pretty good predictor.
If three of these went to a five or lower, people started looking for a job.
So this is a model that explains most every behavior.
And I would say your experience of one of these needs going down, you could call that very very simplified pain.
All negative feelings.
That is, it's going back.
If it's going up, that feels like pleasure, meaning all positive emotions.
Now, three more things, and I and you have a pretty grasp of uh of basic uh uh behavior for humans.
One, we do more to avoid pain than to gain pleasure.
Sometimes we want to read, right?
There's there's I have a bookcase to my right.
There's a there's a lot of people that buy these books and then don't read them, right?
Because the pain of taking the time to read it is more real to us than the pleasure of getting the book done.
That's number one.
Number two, short term is more real to us than long term.
It's so much easier to focus on what is at hand, whether that be that one bug that you focus on because you don't want to have that strategic discussion at this moment, or whether it is you wanting to be in great shape, being able to run 10 marathons.
Congrats, Henry.
Um even if you say you want to have the body to run 10 marathons, it's tempting to take the apple pie.
Why?
Because the apple pie of now is more real to us than the 42 kilometers a month or two months or three months from now.
We do more to avoid pain than to gain pleasure, and we have short term is more real to us than long term.
Now, this all together is a pretty good explanation of people's behavior.
So there is a system, and I just wanted to give you this one.
I'll make sure there's a written out one on my website, which we can link to in the show notes.
But I just wanted to start there, and I hope Henry will try to break it for me because that's the the biggest honor you could do.
This wow, thank you for sharing.
I I feel so many things that we can peel from these uh so-called uh concepts, right?
Uh, how do you predict people's behavior?
How do you predict you know maybe the team dynamics, right?
How people behave within organizations.
So maybe let's try to you know go one by one.
So I think you mentioned about the so-called five things uh that people kind of like crave.
The first is like suddenty.
Yes, we kind of like want to know uh the future, maybe maybe not so far ahead future, but at least tomorrow, next week, next year, and so on and so forth.
Then we want to have variety, that's why we all have different options, different tools, different frameworks, different tech stack, and all that.
We want to grow, we want to learn from our craft our career not just doing the same thing we want a status uh at some point in time right maybe uh career ladder maybe in your community uh whatever that is right or maybe social media these days um you want to could be feel connected with other people uh creating the networks and also giving at the end uh you know like servicing to others how does someone actually use this different like different needs I would say like different needs um uh human parts right how how do how does they use it in their I don't know day-to-day life or career or even in leadership right so tell us more about that I love that you're immediately asking me for the tactical so we have the knowledge now and that's fantastic you can use this in two ways one you can self-assess this because it will make it easier for yourself to understand your own behavior how do I currently experience stability is it terrible being one and awesome being ten so you could do that but you can also do this when you are a tech lead for your devs because it is actually a great question to ask.
It also gives them a one-on-one that is less like vague, right?
Why are we having this one on one-on-one about my feelings?
I just want to talk about code, right?
But if you make a concrete, I see most devs, even our friends that are that are that are like hesitant to even accept any one on ones, they like a system.
Oh, this has nice boxes, right?
But you will get a pretty good indication, and you'd be surprised what you learn.
And as a tech leader, I think you should also focus on then looking at are there any low numbers?
I would say five or lower.
That would be something to work on on the growth of your people because you might have this amazing senior in your team, right?
If they experience no more growth, and that goes down and down and down, you should better catch that before they start looking for a new job.
And I think that's the two practical ways that I immediately uh recommend you do this.
Pro tip, you're gonna get them numbers, right?
If people struggle, just tell them go with your gut feeling, don't worry about it being seven or an eight, because that's still closer together than a two and an eight.
It's about direction.
Pro tip number two, you can ask about trends, so you can say, like, okay, it's currently a five.
If we continue like this, where will this be?
Like, ask people to project in the future because that's super useful.
And number three, if you have low numbers, instead of assuming what your 10 is, is also then their 10, ask them what does a 10 on growth or a 10 on status look like for you.
And I will guarantee this will immediately yield you something to improve your team, and it will keep more people in your team, definitely, but it will also deepen that sense of we are building something great together.
Yeah, and I think you mentioned about one-on-one, right?
I think this is uh one maybe tool that uh you can use to actually create a conversation, build conversations, and even like build connections with that person uh itself, right?
So I think one thing that I think I assume, right?
So this is not to maximize all the needs for individuals, right?
Again, like you mentioned about subjectivity.
Uh, different people have different priorities or different needs.
Um, and there's a spectrum, right?
So my your 10 uh might not be my 10, and vice versa, right?
So uh this is something that not for everyone to maximize all of them, but uh depending on your situation and the depending on the subjective preference, uh, this could be different.
So, how does this differ with I don't know, something else?
Uh, what I know is about Maslow's hierarchy of needs, right?
That is commonly used for assessing human needs.
Yeah, so Maslow starts with safety, right?
So actually start with physical needs and then safety.
I'm assuming that in your work those two are not no longer relevant.
Self-actualization is at the end, one of the critiques.
So this is perfect that you know this.
By the way, for everyone, there's a pyramid, Maslow's pyramid, we'll probably also refer that.
I if you need a picture, I I have those from training slides, but it says about first you need to take care of your physiological needs, then you need to take care of your your security needs, your your safety, uh, and it rolls up all the way to the top being self-actualization.
It's a useful thing to think about humans that are in lack and where physical needs are a theme and where physical safety are a theme.
Like it's a more zoomed out picture of this, because of course, if you have a dev that is just physically like in pain, then Maslow's theory is more relevant.
It it won't necessarily come from each of these, but it will show up still because it will show up in stability being low, probably.
So I say Maslow is way more zoomed out, it's for higher level assessment.
In work, we want to go for more personal needs, and I think it's a it's a more zoomed in version and more practical, just for the two tools I gave you.
And a third way of using it, whenever you don't understand behavior, which can happen because everyone acts differently.
Ask yourself what need is this serving.
And if you don't know, you can even ask.
If we categorize it, which one of you these are you because sometimes why is this dev going in conflict?
Because for them, there's some rules around connection, which means you always need to be very straight, or maybe it's because for them I'm going into conflict because status is super important to me.
And the moment that you don't listen to me, I feel that status is decreasing.
I I challenge everyone who listens to this.
If you find a way to break it, I'll be very happy because I've been saying this for multiple years.
Break it, please, because we can make it better.
But this is the most functional way I found to systemize human behavior in a in a short and concise way.
Just try it.
If you like it, try it.
In a way, it's kind of like uh uh like a dictionary, right?
So we know in psychology there are so many different models and frameworks, right?
Not just about you know these human needs, but also like people's characteristics, you know.
Uh I know something called ANTJ and all that, I don't know what it's called the framework.
Uh also like red, blue, green, those kind of stuff.
Yeah.
This is a perfect thank you.
I'm so glad grateful that you brought that up.
Internal validity of most commercially available.
Sorry, I also go slow on this.
The internal validity of most commercially marketed personality tools stuck.
Can I say that?
It's like the ones that you named.
The first one is called the Myers Briggs type indicator.
While some people swear by it, if you look at the internal validity, it's built on some concepts by Carl Jung, and there's some Jume fans out there still, but they don't hold to be true if you try to pick them apart with the scientific method, they're not stable enough over time.
The other one you mentioned, the colors, there's a lot of popular ones, but one, for example, is disc.
There is no scientific data on that being stable over time.
People have different roles in different groups.
We already know that.
But there's another problem with this.
If you put a sticker on someone, you also give them a way to say, This is just how I am.
I cannot do this because I am blue.
And like there's a lot of moments where labels are super relevant, right?
I mean, everyone likes their code to be neat, and you want to know what this piece does, please, right?
Because how are you gonna test it otherwise?
But for people, we have this thing that whenever we are labeled, we tend to also change our behavior.
Yeah, I think that somehow uh feels true.
So, especially if something that doesn't really resonate with your I don't know, like your value, your habit, your background culture, and all that, right?
So I think uh yeah, all models it's good for us to be aware of, uh, maybe use it for our advantage.
But um, one thing for sure, like not and like I don't think all of them is 100% accurate.
Um, so I think it depends on how you use it and what kind of purpose, and I think one critical aspect that this is also I learned from my experience, it's not good for leaders to use this to compartmentalize people or to you put labels on people and think assume that they won't change because of what I understand, at least from me as well.
I tend to change over time, depending on the again the experience situations, new knowledge that comes in and all that.
So, thanks for highlighting that.
The beauty of what you just said is that's why I don't believe in personality labeling, because personality that assumes that personality is stable over time, which if you zoom out to a big enough population, is true because most people don't change.
But I think if you're listening to a podcast, you are already looking for growth, right?
Maybe you'll even try one or two of the things that you learned, uh, which makes you top one percent.
But for those people, it's even less efficient, and it can definitely hold you back.
And I want to just because it was so close to what you were saying.
When people ask me, like, can you summarize your psychology study?
I always say with humans, a model is better than no model, but no model is perfect.
So just wanted to guess that sorry, continue my bad.
This kind of like reminds me of this uh phrase, the map is not the territory or something like that, right?
Where you you can have the model, but it's not the actual depiction of the actual situation.
Yeah, so yeah, one thing that I find very interesting.
You mentioned about this, which I uh relate very closely with personal growth, right?
You mentioned people want to avoid pain as much as uh you know seeking more pleasure.
Uh that's the first thing, and the second one is the short term is something that is more prioritized for people rather than the long term.
So I find these are very good indicators for people to always put in their back of the mind in order for them to grow, right?
So tell us how do you use these two psychological insights?
I would say maybe, uh, for people to actually you know improve themselves.
Good.
So you can actually manipulate or change, manipulate sounds like you're doing something negative, but you can change what you personally for I'm now starting with yourself, by the way.
You can change what you relate to something.
Let's start with the short term versus long term.
The way you change that is to show your brain, which is just a survival mechanism, so it's just set on the now to survive.
If you look like very primal, that's how it how it works.
In coaching, for example, I would just pull the future to the now because our brain is a beautiful viewing screen.
We have a fantasy, and even if you're saying I'm super logical, I don't have well, close your eyes, and what is my skin color?
How do you know?
Right?
It is something you can remember.
It is what our brain does.
What is interesting about that is you can tell someone you can say, like, okay, about the apple pie.
Let's make it not about tech, let's make it about health for a second.
A person says, I have really hard time withstanding the apple pie, and I want to get more fit.
I would ask them, can you imagine yourself keeping in that direction?
What would you look like in five years?
Imagine how that feels and how that looks.
What would happen in 10?
What would happen in 20?
And the strange thing is it's the emotion that is there that will change your mind on this.
So you can do this for yourself.
If you have behaviors you haven't been able to change, like, for example, I know a lot of tech leads are I'm just super stressed out about bad news conversations, telling my dev that they're not good enough, or telling them no when they ask for a race.
So I I'd rather just escalate it one level up, right?
This is a very common theme for I see recognition.
Um what you could then change for yourself is you can reframe and you can first ask like why is this painful, but you can also so the conversation itself is short term pain, right?
Oh no, I need to do something that's uncomfortable to another person.
It feels like almost for some people, it feels like you're stabbing them, right?
But if you go long term, say if I don't say this now to this person, what am I taking away from them?
So, not what I'm taking away now, but what am I taking away long term?
And I'm not saying be indelicate, right?
But if a developer is underperforming in any front, not saying it in the long term will provide the whole universe with more pain.
That person, you everyone will get more pain in the long run.
So sometimes it's just a matter of you change your mind by asking what does this mean long term?
And the safe thing about that question is it's still you answering it.
So you're not even if you ask this of a person, it's their future.
So I feel very safe.
Let's say someone else comes to me and and they say, like, oh, I have a hard time changing this.
If I ask like what happens long term, I'm not steering them their behavior, right?
I'm not telling them this is how you need to change your behavior, I'm just helping them make the long term more real.
And I think this is another one's procrastination, right?
Procrastination, it's just that doing the work is more painful to us than not doing the work, and at one point it reverses if you have a deadline, right?
That is like I'm gonna do it now, and then like two hours before that line, you go crazy and you do it.
That's another one of these.
You could you could ask for yourself like what would be the pleasure of actually doing it now?
What is the pain that I might not get if I do it now?
The last minute stress.
So I think oftentimes the questions, and I'll note a couple down as well because I I don't want people to feel they have to remember everything now, but there's a there's like four or five questions you can use to like it's almost like zooming out of behavior, and the beauty of this what I like about it is it's always the person with behavior making the choice, it's never you dictating what someone else should do because I think that is that's giving advice, and that's not always the way to go, specifically when it's about personal behavior.
So, yeah, I hope that was a useful answer.
Yeah, definitely.
So I think it's all about reframing how do you see you know pain versus pleasure, short term versus long term, and obviously, um, for you to grow, right?
You always have to look at from the long-term perspective, and also for you know, growing yourself, right?
It's not just to just to avoid pain because uh by avoiding pain doesn't mean you will grow necessarily, in my opinion.
So, you using all these uh tools, I I think tech leaders now have a certain psychological behavioral aspects that they can use.
Um, you also have these peer coaching groups with other engineering leaders, maybe tell us maybe top problems or top challenges that you know engineering leaders are facing in their career or in their day-to-day life that you can share with us so that we can also learn from that.
100%.
So the peer groups came from me personally being a CPTO and feeling a little lonely at the top, right?
I'm not taking myself too serious.
I hope you feel that through my voice already.
But what I discovered was you know, there's actually other people that have this job as well.
Why don't I go looking for them?
And I formed this group, we call it a peer group, you could have also called it a mastermind, and the goal was let's just provide multiple perspectives on our challenges.
And that's the context which sparked the whole thing of it's become a whole community.
We have like uh WhatsApp group format, we have live meetings for etcetera, etc.
And in that we discuss real challenges, and sometimes they're super practical, right?
So I literally was like in meetings like that where we discussed okay, ransomware happened, what actually do we do now, right?
So it could be as practical and detailed as as that.
It could be knowledge things, just basically, hey, what do you guys be a senior developer just checking?
But what I see as the bigger challenges, interestingly enough, I was expecting the CTO groups to that be to to be extremely technical, but it's all about people.
And if you were to blindfold me and put me in a group or just read only the transcripts without the names, I would have a hard time telling apart a group of heads of engineering from a group of heads of finance, which is very in I mean, the language will be slightly different, but the themes, if you just abstracted to the themes, one of the biggest things is I'm conflict averse.
Because before you are a leader, it's pretty good tactic not to get into conflict.
If an individual contributor asks me, like, how often should I look for conflict?
I'd be like, no, just do what your boss says, it's a really good strategy.
But this is one of these transformations we have to go through.
And as a leader, this topic comes up often, and I'll give you the following on that.
Often we make a conflict huge in our mind.
Because oftentimes that's already a part of the remedy.
Maybe that conflict isn't actually as hard as you thought.
And if it is something else, maybe the conflict you're averting is a is a bad news conversation, either with a peer or somebody in your team.
Find a model.
So I there is a concept called modeling, which I call that's like the stack overflow of psychology.
You can find people who are great at this.
And with the disclaimer that we just talked about that no model is perfect, there are models out there.
And if you're learning, it's perfectly okay to just copy a model.
And here's the one for bad news, by the way.
Within 10 seconds, bad news out.
Right?
If it is just to be very direct, you asked for a raise, we cannot provide it right now.
Right?
All the stuff that I do before that is actually unfair.
You're getting a rest.
But uh, but I would say, like, this is the part you need to immediately go with the bad news.
Hey, we're gonna cut down, you are one of the people that's gonna be asked to leave the team.
Because then there's no walking around.
And if you don't do this, if you if you just um skip around the topic, you're gonna get way more stressed yourself.
But the other person, their bullshit detectors are already bing, bing bing, bing, bing bing, bing.
Because people are really great.
You've been maybe in this situation yourself where you're not like I know this is not what this is about, just get to the real stuff, right?
We know this from our families, from our private life, right?
So my recipe is bad news out 10 seconds, then separate it from the person as much as you can.
So I would say, like, we cannot give a raise right now.
Here's reason A, B, and C.
Then you give, I understand that this would provide feelings on your part, right?
So make a space for feelings, be like, I can understand this is not fun to hear, or whatever the words are that you usually use, don't copy me exactly.
But just say, like, I understand this is not what you wanted to hear, this is not fun.
Maybe if the language you use is more this sucks, you you say that, but just then give some space for emotion, and then say, I understand there might be a need to discuss this, but I suggest we keep it at this for now, so we both get to sleep on it for a night first, because then you give people the space for their emotion, not with you per se, otherwise, you're gonna end up in endless discussions and loops.
So, this is the model that I've I've seen.
Most people like, oh Martine, that's like I get emails on this model.
So, please, if it works for you, it's just keeping it really short.
Because there is now it's it's it's one, it's respectful, but two, it's also not as personal, right?
It's not like you suck, right?
It is just this is the decision, this is the reasons.
If you can pull it away from that person, right?
If it's like you're not getting a raise because we are not making enough profit, say that, right?
You don't need to be like if you can share that, by the way.
Of course, be confidential with whatever is confidential with peers, however, and bosses, there's an extra step if you want to have frank conversations.
Oftentimes it's not this type, but it can follow a similar format, but it has to be proceeded with asking permission.
Same in every culture.
In my culture, you would get away.
We like we Dutch are very low power distance, so we have no issue starting this conversation with our boss, and also our boss expects it.
But as a global advice, knowing that the audience is global, there's never anything wrong with asking permission.
Like, I would like to discuss something.
Can you make the time?
Is never wrong, and if it's no, respect it, and you can still ask, would there be time later?
But that's that's a disclaimer I would give for bosses.
Because if you go bad news without asking permission, I would consider that mutiny.
Yeah.
Well, I think um that's uh speaks truth to me as well, right?
Uh, the people aspects and uh conflict management always kind of like the top challenges, especially if you're new to this uh leadership management, right?
Uh managing people, it's always maybe one of the first few challenges that feels very, very difficult because first unlike learning technologies, right?
You can read so many things on the internet or maybe books, you can find resources.
But uh dealing with these situations, first, yes, there might be model out there, but it's very specifically um contextual because uh different people is different, different cultures, different communication patterns and all that.
So I find that this is definitely one of the biggest challenges for leaders out there.
And thanks for giving us the tips about how do you do this difficult conversations, right?
Because yeah, again, some of us feel stressful if we have to convey these difficult conversations, but for whatever reasons, sometimes we have to convey it, right?
So be it for performance uh uh improvements, be it for you know, like tough situations in the economy, organizations and all that.
So, one thing that I want to peel a little bit more further, right?
Because this is always the first hurdle for tech leaders before they actually want to step up and be, you know, an engineering manager or maybe engineering leader.
So, what steps concretely they could do in order to kind of like be able to navigate this if they want to try giving it a go, you know, taking this step uh forward.
So you're asking, uh just to recap, you're asking if somebody's aspiring, how do you make those steps?
Yeah, how do you learn these people aspect and also conflict management, right?
Because like tech leaders, we always uh work with code, we always work with specifications, and that's about it.
Kind of like less uh involved in those two aspects.
It's a lot with what I would immediately say is if you want to make a career step, you look for extra responsibility and you ask if you can get that.
So it's again a permission thing.
I'm I'm pretty heavy on permission, uh, because I think that is very useful, and also take the no's as okay, but also not as permanent, right?
I meet people who've said, like, I would like to become an engineering leader, and then they get a no, and maybe they get some reasons, and then they never have ask ever again, and I speak to them six years later.
And I would say if there is a no, it's almost always valid, maybe not the right timing, but it's always always valid to ask what are the reasons and work on that in a small way, and maybe even ask that can I get a a little like help in growing this, or can I get a little project where I can practice this?
So as long as you do that, you can ask again, give it a reasonable time, you will feel out what it is.
But I would go like it's about ownership, and the other part is all the people things, it comes down to communication, and I think that is not something you can learn from a book, it's something you do by practicing.
One advice that I personally got recently from somebody that was coming in for my podcast, he said, if I could give people one action, it was find the person that you have the hardest time connecting with in your company and go for a coffee with the intention to learn and listen, not to push anything, but that I think it's a pretty wise advice if that relationship is totally broken, of course.
Right, so don't overdo this, you can do one little less, right?
But I think going out of your bubble is great, and I think as an aspiring tech leader, the more you go outside the bubble of code, it will be a very fun stretch for you, but it will also improve the value because in the end you're in a business.
There is sales, there's marketing, and you might currently think, I dislike all of that.
My thing is I have found that most of the times when I dislike or I'm uninterested in something, I don't know enough about it.
So I'll pull a book from my from my uh uh bookcase right now.
I thought molds and mushrooms were incredibly boring, and then I read a whole book on it, and it's great, it's a fantastic world.
And I would say, like, developers know this rabbit hole concept, right?
You go down a rabbit hole, whether you're a mod for a certain game game, right?
Or whether you just went extremely deep into this obscure framework because it was somewhere in your old car.
You probably get more appreciation when you dive deeper.
I recommend you do it outside of tech as well.
And the first I would recommend you start is anything related to money and profit because in the end, most everyone is working for a business.
There's also people working for government, there is it works a little bit differently, but that's the fuel of that vehicle, right?
So, yes, you are the one building the vehicle, but realize that that's the synergy between the two.
If the fuel runs out, you could have built the best thing ever, it's still a problem.
Or uh no bueno is uh a good summary.
Right.
So, yeah, I think learning outside of tech is definitely very important, right?
And communication.
So, I think when you step up as a leader, as a manager, right?
You need to communicate.
You cannot just you know, maybe chat only through you know Slack or something like that.
You need to communicate, you need to somehow make a sense of the situation, maybe from people's behavior, habit, communication patterns.
So, all this you need to learn, right?
You need to maybe pick up a book or go into peer group, uh, mastermind, those kind of things, and always pick curiosity, I think, like um just to have interest in this kind of subject, in this kind of a knowledge, so that you can get equipped uh once you step up uh on the role, right?
What one other challenge that I find uh most of the tech leaders, because we come from like a very deep hands-on, right?
We sometimes can be a very good IC, but obviously, uh stepping up as a leader as a manager, we need to let other people be in the limelight, so to speak, right?
And this is also another challenge that I feel many people cannot let go.
They still feel itchy to I don't know, do the hands-on coding or be the person to decide on anything very important, like architecture, system design, and all that.
So, how do you advise people to start you know taking off this mindset?
Because I take personally a lot of inspiration from nature.
First disclaimer about the story.
If you want to get great at communication, people are always like Martin, you have so many stories, and you you you have you're quite advanced in your use of language and and levels of abstraction.
That I get from reading fiction, actually.
Not necessarily so people often focus.
I see a lot of people start focusing on the businessy sides, right?
And I love those, like a bookcase full, but the storytelling, which is really relevant because somehow I'll give you this as well.
In most businesses and most professional relationships, logic is overused, and emotion is underused, and the thing is I haven't seen logic change many people's minds.
So that's why with the with the how do you let go, I will then answer with a story, and it's the story of the vanilla orchid.
A vanilla orchid starts as a seed and it falls very deeply onto the ground of the jungle.
There it sprouts, it's a viny plant, and it uses its ground roots actually to crawl a little bit.
It's really cool.
It finds a young jungle tree and it crawls up into the jungle tree, and it like hitches the ride, and it stretches and stretches and stretches, and it keeps its root roots that were so important in the soil.
But at one point it runs into a little thing called a scaling problem, or actually physics, because since it is a leafy plant, it doesn't have the physics to actually push up water high enough.
The canopy of the leaves of the jungle are sometimes 30 meters, sometimes even 60 meters.
I can't believe it, but that's uh that's the real number.
So the orchid has a problem, and it solves it in the most elegant way you can imagine.
It drops its ground roots, it lets go, and then it forms new aerial roots.
And to me, that is the perfect descriptor of in order to grow, you need to let things go.
And I know there was also something you might have been fishing for, which I will also give you.
I had a founder CTO who was struggling with this very much.
It was his baby, right?
This was a founder.
He was deep into this code, it was all his.
And at one point he just saw I'm the bottleneck.
I'm the bottleneck.
And know that if you're not gonna let things go, you are gonna become the bottleneck.
So his quote was also amazing, and that was if only I can do it, I should not do it.
Right, teach, yes, but you cannot be the sole owner.
Some people use that as a tactic, right?
I've seen developers, or maybe then they come into architect like haha, I'm the only one who knows this old code, so they can never let go of me.
But that will make you sour.
I will tell you that.
I think a lot of businesses and and companies uh talk about value, and I think it's interesting how we never talk about virtue.
And I think for yourself, the virtue is is what gives you like I have not seen a developer that used that strategy to become unmissable that didn't turn sour in the end.
It's very interesting.
Wow, thank you for sharing such a very unique um science uh knowledge, right?
I didn't know about the vanilla orchid, definitely.
It's cool, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But I think it's uh kind of like very insightful because um for it to grow to the next level, right?
You need to let go the one of the most important things for itself, right?
Which is the root, how it grew in the first place, right?
So I think I feel this is the same thing for leaders out there, right?
You cannot just be good in being an IC, uh writing the code, um, but you have to grow in some other aspects that you know where you can grow your roots as well, right?
So I think that's a very uh good, I don't know, analogy um from science.
Uh so I think that's uh thanks for sharing that.
And about that story of the CTO, I think that phrasing is kind of like uh important as well.
I find so if only I can do it, I should not do it.
I really love that.
And I think for leaders out there who feels that you have too much to do, you are the bottleneck, you have too many too much knowledge in your head.
Uh I think this phrase can be kind of like a mantra for you to decide whether you should be the one doing it, or it's time for you to let go and uh teach other people.
And there your brain might immediately go, no, but it will be quicker if I just do it.
If you ever catch yourself thinking that, no, it's always a lie.
Because again, that's the short-term brain, circling all the way back, right?
The short-term brain says, No, but I'll just I I know how these permissions work.
Let me just quickly right.
No, no, no.
It's the long-term solution.
And if that takes a little bit more time now, it's a huge yield.
Yeah.
And also kind of like avoiding pain of having to teach somebody, you know, from you know, uh, you know, spending the time and all that.
So I think again, like these two psychological things uh can be used in so many different scenarios, I feel.
Um what one other aspect that I feel tech leaders, engineering leaders kind of like have the challenge is actually to put their product thinking mindset, right?
Because they're all into the tech of the all into the geeky aspect of you know, building the code, building the systems, deploying it, how fantastic the you know the tech stack and all that, but actually uh product thinking mindset is actually equally important, if not more important is this, because I can I can see so many people already start thinking about CPTO, CTPO, you know, not just having T technology itself, but actually having the product uh together as well.
So tell us about this challenge.
What do you see in the appeal group and how can someone improve?
So everyone will recognize, but the requirements weren't clear enough, right?
That to me is like a red flag, like not even yellow, red, because that means that you're focusing on features, and in product we talk about this thing called a feature factory.
What I think is the moment that you are focusing on requirements, you have a big problem because doesn't matter how fantastic your what shall we call it?
PBI or was it product backlog item or or feature or what is it called in the in the in the other ticket or whatever you you system you use, it will always be a representation of something bigger.
Like, let's talk about documentation for a second.
Documentation is like a holiday picture of someone else.
So let's say I now pull up my photos app and show Henry a random holiday picture and just say like now go have fun in Valencia and do exactly that he'll be like what I don't understand but the documentation is not there to show you everything I understand that you feel no but I need to produce as much as possible so I'll focus on what is given to me if you want to be excellent you figure out what this holiday picture is about so the product mindset that you can also have as a tech person even an IC is to understand why why are we doing this because it is also you that is able to innovate better than anyone else because you are so close to the tech it is your downfall if you focus only on that it is your biggest gift if you leverage it I've heard a story which is beautiful here in the Netherlands we have a marketplace for secondhand stuff let's call it the Dutch crags list because most people from pop culture are familiar with craigslist there was a head of product working there.
And he actually took the time to investigate what is the real problem we're solving here.
Because if you're listening to users, they'll say your filters suck.
And before you know it, you have 20 000 tickets on better filters, right?
But he was talking to users, really smart by the way.
And he figured out he said, No, the actual thing is I have a thing in my hand and I want to sell it.
And he made this vision type, like an animated thing of a concept.
This was way before like any AI, etc.
Like computer vision was just starting to be a thing.
And he made this concept animation of what if a customer could just point their phone and it would immediately recognize it, and then that would be listed automatically, taking away all the pain for the customer to have to type and find the right category and blah blah blah blah blah, all the requirement and clear stuff.
When they showed that to the devs, the devs got it, and one of them over the weekend with a new computer vision tool said something like this, and there was a pretty solid recognition thing just running because no one in the rest of the company knew this was technically possible.
You might know.
So I challenge you if you really want to also and this is super enjoyable, right?
Because you're then not no longer a ticket producer, right?
But you're becoming a value addder, and I think that's it's incredibly cool.
So I would also ask it more importantly, of course, the details are important and specifications are relevant, but I think if we go all the way back to the concept of the agile manifesto, by the way, if you're doing Scrum but you haven't visited the website of the Agile Manifesto, I'm surprised how often I I find that.
Just go to agile manifesto.org, it says working solutions over comprehensive documentation.
That part, if you want to do that well, you need to broaden your view.
So I think that's that's the product part.
Of course, there's a product owner, manager, etc.
that can help you.
But I would highly recommend if you can include that in your technical skills, it will be one more fun, even as an IC, but it will be incredibly helpful in your career, even if it's not gonna be your job, right?
You still have a product owner or manager that talks to customers and comes up with the list.
Maybe at one point you say, like, hey, when you decide that this is going on the roadmap, can I join with one of these calls to customers?
It will be unexpected, but you will learn so much because you know what is technically possible.
So the product part in tech leaders, that's like one incredibly fun, but two, that's where that's like where your company really goes crazy.
And it's interesting by the way, how I map this to the dead agile, right?
Yeah, so I find every engineers out there, right?
You need to have this product mindset, right?
Some people actually already calling this role product engineers, right?
And especially with the you know the advancement of AI, right?
Writing code might not be the pure bottleneck anymore, right?
So it's more about you know solving the problems, uh solving the problems, okay.
Yeah, understanding the why and also so many other different aspects, right?
And I think the interest of the domain is also something that you need to pick up, right?
Because you could just think that uh waiting for requirements is um one thing that you do, but I think understanding the domain uh could actually pick a lot of I don't know, new invention in new innovation.
I spoke with Marty Kagan uh long time ago.
He's saying that if your developers are just producing code, I think you kind of like underutilize them.
Um so I think yeah, because engineers know the different possibilities for what technology can offer to do things.
So I think this is very important sharing for you.
You're speaking about AI, right?
So I think um it it might be a miss if we don't talk about AI in an episode these days.
So I saw one of your recent LinkedIn posts about AI, which I find very um interesting uh that we can discuss, right?
You're saying that uh the direction we are going with AI is actually going to the wrong direction.
So tell us what's your what's leading you to this um opinion.
So I think where we are right now, if we zoom out all the way, right?
We are gonna look at this time of the time before digital hygiene, right?
Physical hygiene, we have down.
Almost everyone in the world knows you separate poop water from drinking water, you wash your hands, you take showers, like basic hygiene, even though we're still teaching some like minor groups, it's doing pretty well.
Digital hygiene and including with that mental and AI hygiene is a big topic.
And I think one of the problems is we can learn from history, right?
Because at the time of industrialism, we had the entrepreneurs were going crazy.
This is gonna change the world.
Hey, wait, that's Sam Altman.
This is gonna revolutionize.
We never have to do these menial tasks anymore.
Hey, that's Elon, right?
So I think there's parallels because these were great inventions, and I wouldn't say it would be better if we didn't have them, but they were absolutely polluting the river at the same time.
The river at this moment is our mind, I believe.
Currently, one of the things that I'm seriously worried about is I watched the video that I linked on that post, so you can find it find it on my LinkedIn by the Healthy Gamer.
I'm very interested in psychology, I'm nerdy, so of course I'll land at the healthy gamer.
He cites the first uh research that has now found that use of AI can actually induce psychosis in healthy adults.
That means not in people that are already have a tendency for it, because we know for some substances, for example, uh, there's some drugs and even certain qualities of alcohol that can induce psychosis in people who have a tendency for it, but this can induce it in healthy adults.
Well, if that isn't polluting the river, right?
Do we want to risk this happening without any guardrails for our teams?
So I don't say don't use it, I say we need kind of guardrails.
I called it for now the AI manifesto.
I'll spend the first attempt on my next conference in March on this.
I'll publish it as well by that time.
But maybe it's not a manifesto.
I I think it it's gonna be more like hygiene.
There's certain tasks that it's and by the way, it's so easy to say the word AI, but I really want to really make clear that let's talk about LLMs right now, because this was about LLMs.
Large language models have some structural problems.
There is quite some discussion between the experts on whether throwing more capacity at it will get rid of hallucinations.
The problem with hallucinations, I need to just differentiate between a human hallucination and a LLM hallucination.
Silicon Valley has very well branded the word hallucination, but it's basically screw-ups, right?
That the AI just has what it does.
Anyone that dove into this, I'm gonna oversimplify again, it's a model, so it won't be perfect, but it's just guessing the next word, right?
That's what it does.
It opens a very interesting philosophical discussion if we also do that as humans, by the way.
But let's let's park that for a second.
If the AI is doing guessing words and it can spiral off, that's pretty problematic on its own.
But what we've seen now, since it has been trained for you to stay on, just like YouTube algorithms were trained to have you stay on, had nothing to do.
That was a recommender model, had nothing to do with an LLM.
Recommender models have now gotten us hooked on those things.
By the way, also a great book on that.
It's hooked by Near IL.
Um, but what it does is it simply hacks your brain to to stay on longer.
The big problem with this is if you keep a human hooked in a text conversation, we feel bonded with it.
So, whatever it suggests, we will take into account because at one point it gets a certain status in our mind.
We don't feel per se that that is a machine.
Some of us that was very early on.
There was a developer that said, like, no, it's conscious, right?
It was like very, very early on, but that's an experience, and and I mean, I I talk to ChatGPT or in Gemini.
I've I've I've experienced this.
But the problem with a human hallucination, we call that when somebody loses touch with reality and it starts hurting their environment.
Now, the problem is if you're being fed something that is incorrect, and then you have a reinforcement cycle, which is actually what is happening, that is pretty dangerous.
And I think we are adopting the technology without too many guardrails.
I'm not saying we shouldn't adopt it.
I think it's great for certain tasks, and then again, I'm talking about LLMs.
Recommender models, I think, have made our lives already better.
As astronomy without AI, couldn't have learned all the crazy cool things about the universe that we know.
So there is no world where we will have no AI.
I'm just a little worried about the LLM part, and I'm worried about will we have guardrails in time?
On the other hand, this is gonna sound really cynical.
I hope it's not.
It might cost us a generation to figure that out, but we I also trust that we always figure it out.
I like the term that you mentioned digital hygiene, right?
Because um, you know, it I I kind of like associate this with the problem of social media back then, right?
So when when we started to have like social media, you know, Facebook and all that, right?
We also have this uh challenge, right?
We have the mental health problem, right?
Uh always comparing and also kind of like the algorithms feeding out into feeding us into just one perspective or one aspect, right?
Yes.
So not knowing that actually it is maybe not true, fake news and all that.
And now we uh we seem to have a different uh new challenge with AI, right?
And something that is different to me is about the natural language conversational aspects with AI, right?
Which uh I found your article as well that you pointed out, right?
So it can induce some kind of psychosis to people, right?
And thinking that everything that AI talks might be true, right?
And building a relationship, bonding with them, and sometimes, right, because AI is very obedient to us, I think this kind of like creates a very complex kind of mindset, psychology in your mind, right?
So I think I hope that you can figure it out uh within your conference uh about how to put uh proper guardrails, right?
Because I feel the advancement on the technology and the capability, the capacity is very rapid, right?
We can see it month over month, week over week.
But uh putting the guardrails is something that we are uh still keeping up uh behind, right?
So I think uh thanks for sharing your perspective on this.
And and I'll add to this one more thing.
That the problem is the feedback loop, because that positive feedback loop, the end result.
So I don't think the hallucinations that people will get are unbreakable.
There's some pro some problematic cases, but I don't see that as the major thing.
But if I want to tie this into an interesting psychological fact, there are five things that on a population basis stay pretty stable, and that is the amount of openness, consistency, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.
Those five are pretty good, like stable things over time in personalities when you zoom out of a population.
Neuroticism has grown because if you always get if everything you do with a computer says, yes, everyone thinks this, when you hit into a little bit of a conflict, you're gonna go tense up because you never practiced for it, right?
You know, you're not habituated to having these mini conflicts.
So there's a real effect.
We we measurably see this, and because of this same thing, you're always right, you don't have to try.
I think that's why the consistency is also decreasing.
So the consistency decreasing meaning discipline is also decreasing.
People have a harder time following through with what they said.
So the problems I say wouldn't be only in that hallucination part, but that feedback loop, that's a huge part.
Sorry, yeah, and I and I can say as well, it comes back to what you shared earlier, right?
So AI seems to be like kind of like a short-term solution for a lot of problems, right?
Because we might avoid reading books, we might avoid doing the hard work, we might avoid so many things because AI can just give us um, you know, seemingly pretty good uh solution in the short term, but over the long term probably uh, you know, you won't grow, you'll you won't have your critical thinking, and probably it will also change the way you build relationships with other people.
Um so Martin, I think it's been a great pleasure to have you in the show.
Anything else that you wanna share with us before we go to our last question.
I I have one question for you because I think it's relevant, I wanna know, but I also think it's relevant for the audience.
You have been doing this podcast for a while now.
That is quite some effort to put in.
I mean, I I've made podcasts, I've made content before, so I know this is a huge effort.
Um what's the value for you?
Yeah, so I think um interesting enough that you mentioned in the beginning about growing, right?
So uh one aspect that I use this podcast is actually for me to grow.
Like having this conversation with uh so many great, you know, thought leaders, you know, people like you and exchanging information, I think is really really important for my growth.
And being a podcaster, something that is very unique is that it depends on the style of podcaster you are, right?
Some uh a bit more extremist and more opinionated.
For me, I try and I try to be more neutral, meaning that I can hear different extreme perspectives from different uh people.
And it kind of like gives me a different perspective of on how I see things and tackle problems, right?
I can see the positive things on both sides and negative things on both sides, and that's how I use it to actually grow myself, right?
And I can share it with other people as well.
So far, the community of listeners that who feel benefited uh from the sharing that I do.
That's that's also one need that I feel very good for me, which is to serve others, right?
To give values for other people.
So yeah, those are probably the two main things that I use during this podcast.
Yeah.
If there would have been less effort and you could have gotten a summary of all the episodes without the work, do you think it would have been the same value?
Well, uh, one aspect uh even not just talking about podcasting, I feel it during my work as well.
I'm still doing a lot of hands-on work in engineering, right?
These days, uh it's almost very easy for everyone to start uh solving a certain problem just by asking AI, right?
For for me, someone who have done differently before in the earlier career, right, where you have to struggle, you know, figure out from Stack Overflow, try, you know, and didn't work and struggle, right?
And compared to now, which is like you can just ask different AI, different solutions, keep banging, you know, the questions, the prompts, and somehow it could figure it out.
I think there's a big challenge of, you know, how do you actually learn and how do you actually I don't know, build that brain connection to innovate in new things, understand how fundamentally things work, right?
I think that that part that muscle might be a trophy.
And this is uh something that I worry of myself as well.
And the same thing when you ask about this podcast, if all the knowledge out there you can just easily search and query, uh maybe it will be good for short term to answer specific questions that you have, but philosophically, how you want to think big in bigger picture, right?
How do you want to build a bit better world, you know, solve bigger problems?
I think it's something that might be a challenge if we always continue on this path.
Yeah, or we rely on AI that it grows super smart that it can solve everything for us.
What I'm hearing, so thanks for sharing, by the way.
This is great.
What I'm hearing is what I'm pondering myself lately.
I think almost everyone is looking for a quick fix and also a binary world of ones and zeros.
Well, that is not the world, right?
I think nuance is where it is.
I think the wisdom is not in the book summary.
I think the value that you just explained, you got of seeing both sides.
I think that's wisdom.
But that might be me, but maybe I'm yeah.
Yeah, that I'm thinking yeah, I learned from some someone as as well uh last time, you know, maybe in a book or podcast or something.
Even reading a book, right?
You you might have the same text, you might have the same pages, right?
But different people will interpret the things that is shared in the book.
Maybe it could be stories, it could be the concepts, it could be whatever that is, differently, right?
And they learn from those aspects.
So people's learning path is different, even though maybe the gist of the summary is kind of like the same, you have the same bullet points, but how people get there actually is something that is unique to them.
And I find this is the same for you know, maybe podcasts, right?
Building conversations, everyone's will take different takeaways from different parts of this conversation.
And but somehow they could learn something uh new from this, yeah.
Sorry, you were you were saying something as well.
That's exactly what I'm just gonna drop that and go for what you just said is exactly what happens in the peer groups.
I end every peer group, so that's three hours of going around the table and asking what challenge do you have uh that you would like some input on.
And in the end, I ask, what insight did you get?
And what one action are you going to take?
Everyone's is always different.
That's so cool.
And and by the way, it can also happen within a person because I have a weird practice that there's a book that I reread every year or so, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey.
I get something else from that every year, which is very weird, but also cool, right?
Yeah, um, and what I think lastly, because that's the last part I would like to give to your listeners.
Reading, consuming is not the same as producing, and I understand that it's an easy way, but you know how satisfying producing is because you know how it feels when you write the piece of code and it does what you do.
I recommend if something resonates of a podcast and a book, why not write something small about it?
Ask someone else about an opinion on something, but because I think the nuance that's where you really get become a master, right?
I think that's the beautiful.
Like I do transformations for companies as well, and I I have some weird habits, I'm just sharing them.
At the end, I write everyone that I worked intensively with a letter.
I do it for myself, actually.
I asked them in the end, do you want it?
If not, also fine.
But I do it for myself, and I find writing but also creating, like even preparing for this podcast, right?
I needed to think about I knew the first and the last question, so I needed to think what's the best way I can do.
I I will give it my go.
I'm not saying it will make me like excellent, right?
But just that reflection, sometimes it's not about that magic new piece of knowledge, but sometimes it's about turning it into like yeah, digesting it and producing something of yourself.
I don't know.
Yeah, as a final thought.
So, yeah, this reminds me of the the quote by Richard Weidman, right?
So, teaching others is the next level of learning, kind of uh, you know, yeah.
Because you can't if you if you consume a lot, you think you know, uh, but take that chance to actually explain it to others, even someone who is beginner or maybe juniors or whatever that is.
And if you can't explain it well, such that they would understand that kind of like shows that maybe you don't understand things in the first place.
So Martin, it's been a great conversation.
I have what only one last question, which is like a tradition in my podcast.
I call this the tree.
Technical leadership is them.
Think of them just like advice.
Maybe you can share your vision today.
That would be great.
Yes.
The three pieces.
I will give the very first in order to speed up, you sometimes need to slow down.
Meaning exactly what I say.
But I see people have no problem speeding up, but I have a lot of problems slowing down.
This can mean really block that hour for yourself and don't accept other people planning over it because you called it focus time by mistake, and people know oh focus time, I can just plan a meeting.
Really take time for reflection.
The second is knowledge uninvested in action is useless.
So if there is anything that I have said that resonates slightly, my personal request, just try it.
And if it doesn't work or does work, you will learn something.
And in both cases, let me know because that's fucking cool.
The third is learn to speak business.
And if it is not interesting to you, you might not know enough about each other.
Cool.
I think those are really powerful uh sharing that you just gave to us, right?
I really love the kind of like the second one, right?
So you have all the knowledge, you have listened to a lot of uh podcasts, reading a lot of books.
But if you never take the action, actually it's kind of like useless in the end.
So Martin, can I give you?
Oh, sorry.
Yeah, go ahead.
Can I give you the story that made this learned by me?
Because I I I love telling stories.
I was rowing competitively uh when I was still before my studies, and at one point I was coaching competitively, I've lived in Singapore for a year, being the national head coach, so I was like fit all the time until one point when I stopped rowing competitively, but I kept eating like I was still rowing competitively, and I got pretty fat.
Now that happens, and at one point I said to myself, I'm 20 something, uh 24, so I need to lose this weight.
So I moved more and I lost that weight.
And being a 20-something year old, non-polished, let's let's call it maybe this is also a little bit Dutch, but I was very impolitely loudly calling a friend on the phone while in the tram in Amsterdam, saying, Yeah, I lost all this weight.
I regret that part of the story, but there was a lesson there that was fantastic because opposite of me, there was a person that could not fit in the seat, like hugely obese, which was taking an interest in this story of me use losing 20 kilograms.
And when I hung up, she asked, Did I just hear that you lost over 20 kilograms?
And I said, Very proud.
Yeah, can you tell me how you did it?
So, well, I started eating less and um moving more.
And she went like this, and this is the lesson.
Oh man, I hoped you would have the magic formula.
Wow, that's a very powerful uh story.
It's kind of like I think it's a good reflection for us.
We I think most of us know kind of like the solutions, the answers.
You know, we have the internet, we have the books with resources available to us.
If only we could just pick a small part of those, uh, take an action, experiment, do small things and iterate and improve your lives.
I think that would be uh that will bring us to some somewhere that probably we'll never know before, and hopefully to the positive uh side of your life.
So thanks for sharing that powerful story, Martin.
If people would love to connect with you, you know, hear more stories from you or join your peer groups.
Is there a place where they can find you online?
Yep.
So first I have a little gift.
I have a free training on taking action because it's easy to say, but then how do you do it?
On my website, group effort.nl slash action.
There's a free training on action, it's four times five minutes.
It's just quick, but it will help you if you're like, okay, but where do I begin?
So that's a little gift.
If you want to stay in touch, I have a newsletter, group effort.nl slash newsletter, also not that hard.
And if you want to say hi on LinkedIn, I'm called Martin Versteeg, but you can also go to LinkedIn.com slash in slash verstech v-e r s t-e-e-g V E R S T E G.
And I'd be very happy to hear if anything that I said had a positive or ne or negative effect.
I hope not, but um that would be fantastic.
Henry, thank you so much for having me, man.
Yeah, cool.
I'll put uh all those links into the show notes.
Thanks for the give as well.
I hope people uh learned something, uh a thing or two from our today's conversations.
And yeah, thank you so much for your time today, Martin.