Mark Zuckerberg Says This Habit Is Key to Becoming a Better Boss
"The Secret Life of CEOs," a six part podcast series by the people behind Freakonomics Radio, is packed with tasty little thought nuggets from some of the most celebrated executives in the world, like Richard Branson, PepsiCo's Indra Nooyi and G.E.'s Jack Welch.
Oh, and Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
In the newest episode, host Stephen Dubner chatted with the social media titan, who revealed that he has come along way as a manager — and there's one important takeaway a boss or manager can do to make his or her company a better place to not only work at — but thrive.
In Facebook's early days, listeners learn, Zuckerberg was a notoriously bad listener.
"I thought he showed an incredible audacity to not learn and listen as a leader," says Jeff Sonnenfeld, a leadership scholar at Yale. "Oh my gosh, has he changed. And he’s had a great board, great mentors, and also he’s just been a great learner. He has been remarkably different now as a leader than he was when he first became CEO."
What changed, exactly?
In Zuckerberg's words, it was only a matter of trust. He started green lighting more ideas, and stopped outwardly dismissing the ones he disagreed with. And once he relinquished some of his control, Facebook became the social networking legend it is today.
Here's the exchange he and Dubner had:
ZUCKERBERG: I actually think the most important thing is what decisions and what processes on a day-to-day basis you choose to let people have the freedom to do, and just not get involved with.
A huge part of how Facebook works is giving a large amount of freedom to our engineers at the company, and to people who use the product to make with it what they will. And trusting people to do that, rather than ——
DUBNER: Was that hard for you to get to, or … ?
ZUCKERBERG: I think it’s hard every day. Because when you’re running something, you, of course, have the ability to make as many of the decisions as you would like. The real art is not — not when you know that you have someone who is a superstar, who is going to make great decisions, but deciding to let people do things that you disagree with, because on principle, and it’s just going to free up more creativity and people will feel like there’s more potential to try different things in the future that may be better, if you let them go do those things, even if you disagree with them.