Thread by @DanRose999

I had a December tradition at Facebook of delivering a one-hour "end of year talk" to my org. The topics changed each year but the common thread was a reflection on life and work outside of our day-to-day. Here's a high-level summary of some of the themes I shared in those talks:

One of my favorite books is Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. We all have activities where we are in a flow state. For me it's surfing - when I see a wave on the horizon coming towards me and suddenly I'm lifted up - I'm not thinking of anything else in that moment.

When we close our eyes and imagine our flow state activities, most of us picture things we do in our free time - cooking, rock climbing, music, writing, etc. But when we evaluate our waking time, most hours are spent at work. What would it look like to experience flow at work?

When I'm on the cusp of closing a big deal, it feels like I'm watching that wave on the horizon coming towards me. Calm and focused, I lose all sense of space and time. Engineers describe similar feelings after a really good uninterrupted coding session, like making music.

I’m also in flow when I feel connected to my co-workers, when we trust and respect each other to the point of finishing each other’s sentences. In that state, a productive strategy brainstorm can feel like you're in a band where everyone is “in the pocket” jamming together.

We tend to feel closest to people when we’re able to be vulnerable. I learned this lesson in my first job after college when I worked for a personal growth seminar company called Life Mastery. 15 years later, I started integrating those insights into a corporate context.

As I’ve shared here before, my first performance review at FB was brutally tough, my team and peers unanimously said they didn't trust me. I shared that feedback with the people around me and eventually regained their trust. This woke me up to being vulnerable at work.

As my role shifted from manager to executive, I thought my job was to stand on stage and rally the troops. Later I got feedback that I had a “leadership gap.” Next time I got on stage, I shared this feedback with my entire org and people rallied around me like never before.

I could sense that I was onto something, and I leaned into it. I started delivering my end of year talks, and I pushed myself each year to be open and share stories. I wasn’t a natural story teller back then, I preferred abstract strategy talk. But I was learning to lead.

I spoke openly about mental health, something that members of my family had personally battled along with so many others. For years after that talk, people reached out to me for help and advice when members of their own family struggled with similar challenges.

I talked about my mom’s ongoing battle with Parkinson's disease. When she was first diagnosed 25 years ago, my dad promised himself to make every day count. *Make every day count*

I showed Steve Jobs' Stanford commencement speech, and the final birthday speech in Meet Joe Black. And shared poignant books written by people who knew they were dying: Being Mortal, When Breath Becomes Air, Not Fade Away. The holidays are a good time to reflect on what we have.

I leaned into vulnerable leadership because I saw the impact it had on my relationships at work. Our teams stayed together longer, had more fun and got more done. People felt more connected, happy and productive. We all started spending more time in a flow state.

I created a leadership program called Flow. We took groups of 10 managers through a 2-day offsite where they had a chance to reflect on themselves as leaders, co-workers and humans. I opened each session, and I was rewarded with beautiful thank you notes and hallway hugs.

Being vulnerable is stressful. You need a safe space with people you trust. Each year as my org grew bigger I thought about abandoning my end of year talk. But then someone would come up to me and tell me how much they were looking forward to it, and I knew I had to keep going.

Earlier this year I decided to start sharing my stories broadly. It began as an experiment (like those end of year talks) and gained momentum as people encouraged me to keep going. Your feedback has been one of the great joys for me in 2020. Thanks for listening. Happy holidays.