Matt Mochary
Executive Coach at Mochary Method
Matt Mochary is Silicon Valley's most sought-after executive coach, working with CEOs of OpenAI, Coinbase, Reddit, Rippling, Notion, and partners at Sequoia and YC, and author of The Great CEO Within.
Dimension Profile
Key Themes
Episode Summary
Matt Mochary, coach to the CEOs of OpenAI, Coinbase, and Reddit, shares his most practical leadership advice including why learning to fire people well is a critical skill, how anger and fear mislead leaders, and the single most important factor that determines whether a layoff goes well or creates lasting damage to a company's reputation.
Leadership Principles
- → Learning to fire people well is one of the most important leadership skills
- → Anger and fear often point you in the exact opposite direction you should be going
- → The biggest marker of a botched layoff is whether people heard it from their manager one-on-one or not
Notable Quotes
"The biggest marker between a botched layoff and a successful layoff is: did they hear it from their manager in a one-on-one?"
— On the single most important factor in layoff execution
"If they heard it in an email, in a group chat, that's when people start going on Twitter and newspapers, because it feels dehumanizing."
— On why impersonal layoffs create lasting damage
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