leadership Archives | Embrace Possibility

Why We Seek Validation We Don’t Need — And What To Do Instead

Robert Chen — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 05:16:47 +0000

As I look back on this past year — especially the early days of building and launching Vana Lab — one lesson stands out more than I expected. It didn’t come from a book, a mentor, or a workshop. It came from the very human experience of putting something new into the world.

When I first started drafting materials for Vana Lab — the website copy, the program descriptions, the outreach emails — I shared them constantly with people I trusted. I’d tell them, “I’d love your feedback.”

And they gave great feedback.
Smart, thoughtful, genuinely helpful.

But if I’m honest, part of me wasn’t just listening for improvement.
I was listening for approval.

I wanted the reassuring lines:

“This looks great.”
“You’re on the right track.”
“You’re onto something special.”

What I was really seeking was permission to continue. And in a subtle way, I was also outsourcing accountability: If this doesn’t work, look at all the people who thought it would. It felt safer that way and it tricked me into thinking I needed someone else’s blessing before I could proceed.

Here’s the insight I’m taking with me into the new year:

Take the feedback — and then make your own decision.
Feedback is data.
Validation is optional.
Choice is always yours.

And even better:

You don’t always need validation.
But you always benefit from feedback.

Validation offers momentary comfort.
Feedback creates long-term improvement.

Understanding that difference made the whole process of building Vana Lab lighter and far less emotionally tangled. Instead of being stalled mulling feedback and debating whether I should move forward or not, I could take action to move forward.

Why We Keep Seeking Validation We Don’t Need

We all seek validation — not because we’re weak, but because reassurance feels good. It calms uncertainty. It tells us we’re “okay.”

But validation is comfort, not guidance.

Validation says: “You’re fine.”
Feedback says: “Here’s how this can be stronger.”

One soothes.
One sharpens.

When we rely on validation to make decisions, we end up:

moving slower
doubting our instincts
taking neutral feedback personally
waiting for permission no one can actually give us
outsourcing decisions that ultimately belong to us

Unnecessary validation doesn’t make you safer.
It makes you more fragile.

Feedback helps the work improve.
Validation helps you feel better for a moment.

Only one of those leads to growth.

Six Ways to Trust Yourself More (and Depend on Validation Less)

Here are practical steps I found helpful:

1. Before seeking input, ask: “Do I want reassurance or improvement?”

Most of us never pause to identify which one we’re seeking.

If you want reassurance, say so.
If you want improvement, expect honesty.

Clarity protects your emotions.

2. Treat feedback as data, not direction

When you receive feedback, respond with:
“Thank you — let me sit with that.”

It stops defensiveness while allowing you time to decide what you want to do with the feedback.

3. Build a simple self-validation habit

If you validate yourself even a little, you stop hunting for it everywhere else.

Each evening, ask:

What went well today?
What effort am I proud of?
What did I learn?

Internal validation reduces the desperation for external approval.

4. Separate the work from your identity

“This needs improvement” does not mean “You’re not good enough.”

Feedback targets the work, not your worth.

5. Do small “discomfort reps”

Gradually increase your tolerance for feedback without validation:

send a draft sooner
ask one trusted person instead of ten
publish something without waiting for approval

Each small rep builds independence.

6. Choose your “trusted few”

Not every voice deserves equal weight.

Pick 3–5 people whose feedback is grounded, honest, and aligned with your values. — your own “challenge network,” as Adam Grant calls it.

Let their voices matter.

Let everyone else fade into background noise.

The less I rely on validation, the clearer I think and the more confidently I move. People also give better feedback when they no longer feel pressure to protect your feelings.

Instead of asking people whether they like something, I'm focusing on what I'm learning — and moving forward with what feels meaningful for me to pursue, in the way I want to pursue it.

As I look to next year, I'm taking to heart that my decisions - the ones that matter most - belong to me.

As we close out the year, here’s a question worth sitting with:

Where are you waiting for validation you don’t actually need — and what might happen if you moved forward anyway?

If you’re a parent looking for quick tips on helping your child build success habits, you might enjoy the Vana Lab Insights YouTube channel. No validation required — just ideas to support your child’s growth.

The post Why We Seek Validation We Don’t Need — And What To Do Instead appeared first on Embrace Possibility.

Trillion Dollar Coach – Bill Campbell Leadership Lessons by Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg, and Alan Eagle

Robert Chen — Sun, 28 Jul 2019 20:39:40 +0000

(click on book cover for more details)

Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell

Published: April 2019
ISBN-10: 0062839268
EP Rating: 4 out of 5 (worth picking up)

EP Main Takeaway: "Your title makes you a manager. Your people make you a leader." To be effective, truly care about helping your people be successful. Show up, work hard, and have an impact every day. Building a healthy community is key to engaging your employees but individual success and ambition, although necessary, can be at odds with community-building efforts. Always keep learning. "If you've been blessed, be a blessing."

Our notes:

Trillion Dollar Coach - Bill Campbell

Purpose of the company is to bring the vision of the product to life. For companies to be successful, must continue to develop great products.

Well-run companies have strong processes, keep people accountable, know how to hire the best employees and evaluate and develop them through feedback, coaching, and generous compensation. To win, it's important to help your employees succeed at scale
If you have the right product for the right market at the right time, go as fast as you can

“Your title makes you a manager. Your people make you a leader” Your employees acclaim that, not you.

People like being managed as long as they can (1) learn something from the manager and (2) the manager can help to make a decision
Make sure your people feel valued when they are in the room with you. Listen and pay attention to your employees to show your appreciation; Care about the company and about people so the respect accrues to you. If you need to demand respect, something is off.
Top priority of any leader is the well being and success of your people; Leadership is not about you, it’s about service to the company and your team
To deepen relationships, start weekly meetings with trip reports or gratitude to each person on the team
Lead from first principles: what immutable truths can everyone agree on
Build trust - trust means people feel safe to be vulnerable and trust means you keep your word. Trust makes it easier for people to disagree with you. Deliberately create psychological safety and help employees be their authentic self
Don’t wait to provide candid feedback but make sure the person feels safe; Couple constructive feedback with caring
Be encouraging and demanding: set high standards and expectations AND support your people to get there
Be the person who gives energy, not take it away - believe in people more than they believe in themselves; Help them be courageous
When problems occur, focus on the team dynamics as opposed to the problem only. Ask: Was the right team in place? Did they have resources needed to succeed?
Understand your job as a leader is to build teams, assess talent, and find doers; Everybody managing a function for the CEO should be better than the CEO at that function
Hire for potential and experience

Lead strong 1-on-1s and weekly meetings

1-on-1 meetings - best opportunities to help your people be effective and to develop and grow. Focus these conversations on:

Prioritization: ask him or her to list the top 5 things to discuss individually and then compare it to your list. Discuss any discrepancies.
Performance: What are you working on? How is it going? How can I help? How are you doing on your KPIs (sales, product milestones, customer feedback, budget numbers, etc.)
Relationships: Discuss peer relationships and team dynamics: are your teams clear on vision and goal? How are you getting along in key relationships (example: Product and Engineering, Marketing and Product, Sales and Engineering)?
Leadership: Are you guiding and coaching your people? Are you weeding the bad ones? Are you working hard at hiring? Are you able to get your people to do heroic things?
Innovation: Are you constantly moving ahead, thinking about how to get continually better? Are you constantly evaluating new tech, products, and practices? Do you measure yourself against the best in the industry/workd?

Weekly Meetings:

Review, first and foremost, operations and tactics - what are the current crises? How are you managing them out of the way? How is hiring going? How are you developing your teams? How were the staff meetings going? Were you able to hear from everyone? What wasn't being said?
Get everyone on the same page, get to the right debate on the most important issues, and make decisions

You can’t be a good manager without being a good coach

Only coach the coachable: people who are curious and want to learn new things; show honesty and humility, work hard and perseveres, openness to other perspectives
“A coach is someone who tells you what you don’t want to hear, who has you see what you don’t want to see, so you can be who you have always known you could be”
People who generate a lot of BS are not coachable because they begin believing in their own BS
Always get back to people
Get to the point - talk about what's going on and what needs to be done
When things don’t go your coachees' way, acknowledge it didn’t go their way, empathize it sucks when that happens, reminder to buck up and soldier one for the team

Bill Campbell's It’s the People manifesto

"People are the foundation of any company's success. The primary job of each manager is to help people be more effecive in their job and to grow and develop. We have great people who want to do well, are capable of doing great things, and come to work fired up to do them. Great people flourish in an environment that liberates and amplifies that energy. Managers create this environment through support, respect and trust.

Support means giving people the tools, information, training, and coaching they need to succeed. It means continuous effort to develop people's skills. Great managers help people excel and grow.

Respect means understanding people's unique career goals and being sensitive to their life choices. It means helping people achieve these career goals in a way that's consistent with the needs of the company.

Trust means freeing people to do their jobs and to make decisions. It means knowing people want to do well and believing that they will."

Be all about the team

Success comes to teams that act as communities: integrating individual interests and putting aside differences to collectively be obsessed with what’s good for the team and company
People involved with community are more engaged with their work and more productive
Tension for individual success and ambition is good but it also makes it tough to cultivate community (tension between creativity and operational excellence)

When to let someone go

Never put up with people who cross ethical lines - harassment or mistreatment should not be tolerated
If you’re spending a lot of time managing a person or if the person consistently is looking out for their self interest as opposed to interest for the firm, it’s time to let the person go
Employees who stop learning will eventually be unable to add value to the firm
Recognize that letting people go is a failure of management - make sure people leave feeling respected with their heads held high; you can’t let them keep their job but you can let them keep their respect; Be clear about letting someone go upfront in the conversation and go through reasoning and provide details; Be respectful and understand that the firm is bigger than any one person

Manager’s job is to run a decision making process where all perspectives are considered and if there is a tie, break the impasse. When at an impasse, have the two people closest to the situation work on it the solution some more and come back with a decision; need a well run process to get to a decision; having a strong process is more important than the decision itself

Money is not about money - money signals recognition, status, respect. It's important to understand people's value on these items because purpose, pride, ambition and ego drive people.

For employees working with the technical team, advise them to share what problem the customer has shared with you and then let the technical team figure out the features. Don’t tell the technical team what to build.

Bring problems front and center

Identify the "elephant in the room" by looking for the topics the team can’t have honest conversations about
Tackle the ugliest problems head on but don’t dwell on it
When things are going bad, people are looking for even moree loyalty, decisiveness and commitment from their leaders

Effective Board Dynamics

Board serves the CEO and company
Board meetings should start with operational updates: board needs to know how the company is doing so be honest and candid. Also, send pre-reading and remove board members who do not do the pre-assignment; Share lowlights along with highlights
Board members should be smart people with good business experience who care about the company and helping the CEO

Qualities of a High Performer

Smart: the ability to get up to speed quickly in different areas and make connections
Hardworking with integrity and grit
Team player - willing to give things up for the good of the team and excited about other people's success
Smart risk taker and willing to stand up for what is right
Players who show up, work hard and have impact everyday - win right with commitment, integrity and teamwork - doesn’t fight for credit; treats everyone as a person

Have permission to be empathetic - “To care about people you have to care about people”

Treat everyone with respect and care about the whole person which includes their families; get to really know the important people around your employees
When an emergency happens, show up for people - drop what you’re doing and go
To succeed, foster a team that cares for each other

Be generous and look for high impact low cost ways to get involved to help sustain generosity

"If you’ve been blessed, be a blessing."

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Great by Choice by Jim Collins

Robert Chen — Thu, 05 Oct 2017 04:50:58 +0000

(click on book cover for more details)

Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck-Why Some Thrive Despite Them All by Jim Collins

Published: October 2011
ISBN-10: 0062120999
EP Rating: 5 out of 5 (must read for business leaders)

EP Main Takeaway: Great leaders reject the idea that forces outside their control or chance events will determine their results. They accept full responsibility and maintain fanatic discipline, empirical creativity, and productive paranoia. They attract others by having a goal that is bigger than any one individual.

Our notes:

Great by Choice - best leaders (10X) didn't predict the future

They observed what worked, figure out why it worked and built their company around these proven foundations
- Not more risk-taking, bold, or visionary
- More disciplined, empirical and paranoid
Need to be able to scale innovation, not just be innovative
Figure out when to go fast and when not to; not all about going super fast
Change on the outside doesn't necessarily mean change on the inside

Race to the South Pole - 1911

Roald Amundsen vs Robert Falcon Scott - Roald wins because he prepares properly by:

learning from practical experience what works (apprenticed with Eskimos)
preparing with intensity all the time so he was ready if he and his team needed to dig deep
setting buffers for unseen events
presuming bad events will happen and having contingency plans

Qualities of a 10X leader

1. Fanatic discipline: shows consistency of action; rejects pressure to conform in ways incompatible with values, performance standards, and long-term aspirations

20-Mile March: set both lower and upper bound on growth;
- Two discomforts: unwavering commitment to high performance and holding back in good conditions;
- Designed and self-imposed by the enterprise; performance marker must be achieved with consistency ***
Helps build confidence to perform well in adverse circumstances;
Reduces likelihood of catastrophe and helps you exert self-control;
- Don't blame circumstance or environment; don't overextend yourself
Never too late to start the march

2. Empirical creativity: during times of uncertainty, look at empirical evidence, not to other people; rely on direct observation and practical experimentation and build deeper empirical foundation for decisions and actions**

10X companies are not always more innovative but they always deliver (Intel delivers)
Blend creative intensity with relentless discipline
Fire bullets, then fire cannonballs - figure out what works then pile on
- Bullets are low risk, low cost, and low distraction
- Convert to cannonballs with successful ideas
- Beware of uncalibrated cannonballs with good outcomes because it encourages the use of bad processes
You will only know if something works through empirical validation, not pure analysis
Don't let discipline inhibit creativity or creativity to erode discipline

3. Productive Paranoia: "fear should guide you but it should be latent" (Bill Gates);

Don't believe your hype or in your invincibility; Believe 100% that conditions will turn against you without warning and prepare for it; channel paranoia into productive action
Build cash reserves and buffers to prepare for the unexpected: start and keep this from the beginning
Bound risk and know where your death line is - important to stay in for the long haul
Ask: how much time do I have before my risk profile changes?
- Minutes, days, weeks, years?
- Faster is not always better - take time to see how an uncertain situation unfolds but be ready to act fast
Zoom out then zoom into remain hyper-vigilant to changing conditions
- Are there new conditions? Does it change our plans?
- "Think first even when you need to think fast"
- What is the worst case scenario? What are the consequences and our contingencies?
Create and use a SMaC recipe to execute your strategy: Specific, Methodical and Consistent
- Operating instructions - includes both Dos and Don'ts
- Be stoic about what you cannot control but exert extreme control when you can - be SMaC!**
- Try not to change your SMaC often (like Constitution - ok to question and challenge but rarely change)
Figure out what works, understand why it works and use that info to understand when to change and when not to change
- "Is our recipe not working because we lost discipline or has our circumstances fundamentally change?"
- "The Signature of mediocrity is not an unwillingness to change; the signature of mediocrity is chronic inconsistency."
Embrace consistency and change, both at the same time

The role of luck:

10xers get a higher return from luck than others
- Getting a high return on luck requires throwing yourself at the luck event with ferocious intensity, disrupting your life and not letting up**
- When bad luck happens, "10Xers use difficulty as a catalyst to deepen purpose, recommit to values, increase discipline, respond with creativity and heighten productive paranoia"
- Don't count on luck to win

Level 5 ambition: channel ego and intensity into something larger and more enduring than yourself - focus on your cause, your company, your work; Choose goals by impact, contribution, and purpose if you want to attract others to help.

The post Great by Choice by Jim Collins appeared first on Embrace Possibility.

How to Become More Decisive

Robert Chen — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 02:07:41 +0000

I want to be decisive.

Why?

Because decisive people are the ones that change the world and succeed in life. It's hard not to admire someone who is resolute.

So how can we become more decisive?

I used to think that being decisive was about making fast decisions. I never quite understood how someone can be so sure of their decision without fully analyzing all the pros and cons. It seemed a bit reckless to me. I also thought decisiveness was something that comes with age and experience but that has been debunked by my encounters with many young people who are decisive and many older folks who are not.

Having studied the lives of decisive leaders, I found that decisiveness is directly correlated to how well you know yourself and how often you take time to self-reflect. People who are decisive already know what they want and have thought a lot about what is acceptable and not acceptable in their lives long before having to decide. That is why when it comes time to make a decision, they seem sure of themselves. When you clearly know where you stand, it is hard not to be decisive.

How often do you reflect on your values and beliefs? Do you know what is acceptable and not acceptable in your life?

From my experience and while leading the Know What You Want Career Workshop, I have noticed that many people (myself included) rarely take their time to look within. I am so busy with what is going on outside of me that it feels counterproductive to sit and think about who I am. Recently, I have consciously taken more time to learn about myself and I have noticed that I am naturally more comfortable with the decisions I make.

Take some time to self-reflect. It'll save you time in the future.

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