In those very, very early days you want people who are there for the mission above all. You’re looking for passion, enthusiasm, and mindset. And you’re looking for seed crystals. Seed crystals are people who are so good and so well loved that they can almost single-handedly build large parts of your org. Typically they’re experienced leaders, either managers of large teams or super-ICs who everyone listens to. Once they’re in, a tidal wave of other awesome people will typically follow.

That’s how we built our core team at Nest. We sought out the best of the best, and they created their own gravity—pulling in more and more talent.

I remember looking around the office in those early days with my mentor, the gritty, boisterous, wise Bill Campbell. We stood there just grinning.

I first met Bill when he was on the board of directors at Apple. I got in touch again when I needed help as I was starting Nest. I remember he looked directly into my eyes with a dead stare, watching for any microexpressions, and asked, “Are you coachable?” Which meant, “Will you listen? Are you ready to learn?” That was the only qualification you needed to be coached by Bill—the ability to admit that you don’t know everything. That you’re going to screw up. And that you’re ready to learn from those screwups, listen to advice, and act on it.

I was fortunate to be assigned a seat next to Bill George, author of Discover Your True North and a professor at the Harvard Business School. During our dinner conversation, he told me something surprising about his experiences working closely with many Fortune 500 CEOs and high-level executives. He noticed that leaders needed to get in touch with their own deep sense of pain, vulnerability, and humility, and occasionally a deep sense of shame, in order to shift from being good leaders to becoming great leaders. At times, this was simply acknowledging the pain of being human, or the pain of feeling like they had let others down, which they had covered up, as many of us do. Other times it was the pain from difficult, imperfect childhoods, failed relationships, or traumatic events. Feeling this pain helped these executives glimpse how much more was possible by freeing up energy and

feelings that were being held close, which allowed them to be more authentic and caring leaders.

I’m comforted by something I’ve come to believe more and more in recent years—that it’s not always good for one person to have too much power for too long. Even when a CEO is working productively and effectively, it’s important for a company to have change at the top. I don’t know if other CEOs agree with this, but I’ve noticed that you can accumulate so much power in a job that it becomes harder to keep a check on how you wield it. Little things can start to shift. Your confidence can easily tip over into overconfidence and become a liability. You can start to feel that you’ve heard every idea, and so you become impatient and dismissive of others’ opinions. It’s not intentional, it just comes with the territory. You have to make a conscious effort to listen, to pay attention to the multitude of opinions. I’ve raised the issue with the executives I work most closely with as a kind of safeguard. “If you notice me being too dismissive or impatient, you need to tell me.” They’ve had to on occasion, but I hope not too often.

It is not helpful to feel sorry for ourselves. I’m sure our employees don’t need any rah-rah speeches. We need leadership and a sense of direction and momentum, not just from me but from all of us. I don’t want to see a lot of prophets of doom around here. I want can-do people looking for short-term victories and long-term excitement.” I told them there was no time to focus on who created our problems. I had no interest in that. “We have little time to spend on problem definition. We must focus our efforts on solutions and actions.

Over time, hyperawareness became part of my character, part of me. It became, as I’ve often joked, a superpower. Even today, when I work with coaching clients, I track every bob of the Adam’s apple, every pause in the story (where it occurs, what words preceded and followed it, where their eyes move when they pause), to brace for the coming storm or, even more, to discern what they might need, right then, in that moment. If I give them what they need, says my little boy, they will be saved, and if I’ve saved them, then I’ll be safe.