Ramit Sethi coaches Ritesh on toning down aggressive speaking in interviews and meetings. Instead of blunt critiques like "X million page views means nothing," ask guiding questions that steer people toward better metrics like revenue per visitor. Study how senior managers get buy-in without calling people out.
Okay, this one's a fun one. I want to show you a video today of a social skills teardown I did with one of my dream job elite students, Rajesh. And what you'll notice in this video is that he does something that's typical of a lot of guys. He does the skipping over the social niceties. He gets right to the point, which a lot of us think is a good thing, but actually is not in social situations. He is kind of aggressive with the way he reacts to me and it just doesn't come across as ultra friendly. Now I show him a better way in the video. Take a look. So, Ritesh, let's get right to it, man. How can I help you?
Alright, so my most important question that I have is more about advancing internally at a company rather than getting new jobs outside. And the question is this. How do you draw the line between being efficient versus being liked when you're trying to work with folks who may not be as driven as you are?
Give me some context.
Okay, so for example, last week I was in this meeting and I had this team member who was talking about how her property is getting X million page views a week. And I didn't say anything up front over there. I walked out of the meeting and I made this comment to another colleague saying, what the heck does X million page views do for you? I mean, if I put a donkey at Times Square, it's going to get X million. A lot of millions of people are going to go watch it. That doesn't mean he's going to get a lot of money for it. So why are we focusing on the wrong metrics? Why page views and why not money matrix, money per unique visitor, for example. So how do you draw the line between being efficient versus being liked?
Efficient meaning what does that mean to you?
So efficient means I like to work very quickly towards money. The result.
Yes, Classic. Okay, so a lot of reasons that I assume you like to work towards being efficient. First of all, guys will often dispense with the niceties. They're just like, oh, we don't need that. Let's just talk about the data. Let's just talk about like what matters. That's a guy thing. It's also Indian thing. Right? And the fact that you're like well accomplished, you just want to cut through the mess. Like what are these other phrases that we use? Like to basically eliminate the stuff that doesn't matter. You guys know the phrases I'm trying to think of? There's some phrases, it's just like let's not deal with that stuff. Let's just get to the heart of the matter. Okay? Unfortunately, what I've learned, because I actually have done that many, many times, and actually I would say I. I'm kind of like, with you, I kind of sometimes just want to discuss, like, let's just get to it. So I've learned that sometimes that works really well, especially with certain types of people, but other times, you have to spend the time with the niceties. So kind of playing the game, as you would call it. But to them, it's just being polite. So even on my team, I have a lot of people that are. They're all kind of like, very driven, etc. But there's some people where I'm just like, all right, look, let's just get to it. Like, we're not. We don't need to say anything past hello. We just get right into it. The other people I need to spend a little bit more time talking to. And it's honestly a skill that I work on myself that I'm. I would call myself a B minus, maybe even C level performer. Here's a way you might approach this. There are two things I'll suggest to you. One is you never want to just be like, hey, that's a stupid metric. And the donkey example, while hilarious, you're smart enough to know you can never say that. Instead, what you might say is, start by asking questions. So think of, like, I know you have some pretty wise managers, I assume, like, people who have been around the block, and some of them are probably pretty good. So notice the way that they will ask a question. And 15 minutes later, the whole conversation has shifted to be like, hey, why are we even talking about this metric? And you're like. And if you analyze what happened in the meeting, you're like, how the hell did we get onto that topic? And it all started with one simple question that that manager asked. So the question might be something like this.
Like.
That is pretty impressive. I'm curious, like, how do you think about metrics? So page views is one. There's obviously different revenue metrics and all kinds of other things you could measure. How do you think about that? And then what will happen is, right, it's not. You're not being aggressive at all. And the person will be like, either. They'll just be like, well, we think about this because blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They'll say, whatever, it doesn't matter. The next person will be like, well, what about revenue? And the third person will be like, yeah, like, in our division, we measure revenue per page view, and all of a sudden you've started this whole thing, but you never were unreasonable or impolite. How do you think that would have played out?
Much better than my way.
Okay, you did this and then stormed out. Okay, a question. Yeah, the thing is, like, that doesn't work all the time. It works sometimes. And, you know, personally, like, I'm more used to just being like, look, this is like, why are we talking about this? Honestly, I do that a lot, and I think it would often be more effective if I said, like, how'd you think about that? The thing is, like, you already know the right answer, right? You know the right answer, but you can't just come out from on high and tell people. With certain people, you can. Certain people. But especially if it's a team effort and they're lateral to you, you have to engage them and get buy in. So when we talk about getting buy in, this is where it starts right here. Whereas if you were just like, like, that's a stupid metric and it's doing nothing. No matter what you do from then on, that project is doomed because you never got buy in from the first time you brought it up. So questions are a good way to do it. And then if that question doesn't go anywhere, bring it up at another time. Again, you're just dealing with the sliver in time. But our lives are a long time. Does that answer your question?
It does. This is very helpful.
Yeah, I said there were two parts. The second part, of course, is to see people who do this really well and study what they do. And I know you've already done this with your Cubemate, but let's also think about your more senior managers who are just. They've seen every piece of shit under the sun. They've seen it all. And they've seen, like, people who are just clearly making the wrong decisions. But these managers are so skilled, they would never call someone out in a meeting. Instead, they would bring up that raise the issue, hey, how do you guys think about this? Study them and see how they handle these approaches. Okay, two approaches. All right, Great questions.
Thank you, Ramit.
