Back From the Road
I’m back. It’s been a while since my last article, and I’m sorry for the delay. Life got away from me. We had a phenomenal Build IT Live, and then I headed to India to finalize details on our new Noida office. A month away from home will humble, and exhaust, you.
Turns Out Even I Get Fact-Checked
Settling back in this week, I found a small note sitting on my desk. I’ve been holding onto it since July 9, when I spoke at a conference for one of our customers about AI. During the presentation I made a couple of references I thought were solid. “With great power comes great responsibility.” And a film about artificial intelligence that I called, confidently, AI.
Turns out even I get fact-checked.
A Note From a Stranger
A gentleman came up to my booth afterward and handed me a folded note. “I just wanted to give you this for your next presentation,” he said. My team was standing right there. This isn’t the first time someone has approached me after a talk, and he did it so sweetly. Honestly, he reminded me of Stewart from The Big Bang Theory.
I took the note because I genuinely wanted to know what was in it. If someone sees a way for me to be better, I’ll take the feedback. I opened it bracing for criticism about my content or my structure, or something I’d gotten wrong about AI itself. Nope. He’d written to let me know that “with great power” comes from Spider-Man, and that Will Smith’s film is I, Robot. AI starred Haley Joel Osment.
What Bothered Me More
I’m still deciding what bothered me more. I gave a 30-minute presentation on AI and how we put it to work responsibly, and the two things he walked away with were my cultural references. Fair enough. I know now that I won’t do it again, and all of us should fact-check our slides before we stand up.
As a mom of three boys, I feel like I surrendered a badge of honor in that moment. Of course I’ve seen every Spider-Man movie. Of course I know where that line comes from. But standing on that stage, my brain served up Star Wars instead, because let’s be honest, the great classic references usually are Star Wars.
Nobody’s Perfect
Here’s what I keep coming back to. Nobody’s perfect, and valuable feedback shows up where we might least expect it. A slightly awkward, very tall man who was clearly nervous walked across a conference floor to tell me my references were wrong. He could have laughed about it with a friend at lunch. He didn’t. He wrote it down and handed it to me like a kid passing a note in class, and I’m glad he did.
The Harder Part
The harder part of this is the other side of the room. I’ve watched plenty of people who aren’t open to feedback at all, and that’s one of the biggest challenges we face as leaders. How do we deliver something so it’s received the way it was meant? And when we’re on the receiving end, do we hear the intention or just the correction?
We Say We Want Feedback
Most of us say we want feedback. What we actually want is agreement, and those are very different things. When someone takes the time to tell you something true, they’ve done you a favor, even when it stings a little. Ignoring a problem is always easier than telling someone about it. Silence costs nothing, but handing a person the information they need to get better costs a small piece of courage.
Why I’m Keeping the Note
That note is still sitting on my desk, and I’ve decided to leave it there for a while. It reminds me that somebody in a room full of people I was trying to impress cared enough about getting it right to risk an awkward conversation with a stranger. Every organization has people like him. They’re sitting quietly with something useful to say, waiting to see whether it’s safe to say it, and the tone we set determines whether they ever walk across that floor. The leaders I admire most are the ones who make that walk feel short. They say thank you and they mean it, because being told the truth by someone who had nothing to gain from telling you is one of the most generous things that will happen to you all year.
