This week I felt an inflection point. Two things were true at the same time and I had to make space for both. I got hard feedback on a mistake I made and I was also doing some of the best work I had done in months. My wife has a quote she loves and it has stuck with me for years. Pressure makes diamonds. She lives that, and watching her work has rewired how I think about hard weeks. The pressure is not the thing in the way of the work. The pressure is the work. There is a version of this week where the feedback would have set me back. But this week, I took the note and I owned the mistake and I kept building.
At DoorDash there was a company value about holding two opposing truths simultaneously. It sounds abstract initially, but as a leader you are weighing perspectives that are not your own, sometimes ones you disagree with, and still arriving at a decision that is good for the business. It is not about who is right. Both sides can be right. The work is being able to hold a belief you do not possess, understand it on its own terms, and let it sit next to your own without one canceling the other out.
I struggled with this for a long time. I wanted to win the argument and prove the point. The thing that has changed it for me is respect, and the way I have come to understand it is different from how I used to. I used to think respect was earned. You proved yourself and then it came to you, and the people who had not proven themselves had to wait. That is half of it. The other half is that respect is offered. It is something you decide to give, before anyone has earned anything, because of who you want to be in the room. It is not a verdict on the other person. It is a posture in yourself.
When you hold respect that way, the question of whether you agree stops being the point. The point is whether you can make space for someone to be who they are. That is what lets you sit with a perspective you do not share without needing to defeat it. That is what lets you take feedback without making it about you. The more I have leaned into this, the lighter I feel. The politics feel smaller. The disagreements feel less personal. It is the first thing I bring into the room, not the last thing I give out.