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.

With each round of interviewing, June saw the links between old and new more clearly: “At first I wondered what I would do with my knowledge of literature. It seemed like such a waste. But then I realized that what I have always wanted is a job that keeps me constantly interested and always learning new things.” With each round, she also met more and more people who, like her, had “unconventional backgrounds,” or who impressed her as role models for whom she’d like to become: “I met an extraordinary woman—super smart and super nice—in fixed-income research, who graduated from my alma mater around the same time I did.

It happened in steps. Many of her first steps were not about what but about who. Suppose you’re tossed into a leadership role for which you feel unprepared, and in which you find yourself lost in the fog without a clearly articulated vision for what to do or where to take the company. What steps should you take? Graham did what many great leaders do; she practiced the “First Who” principle: First get the right people on the bus, then figure out where to drive the bus. If you don’t know what’s coming down the road, your best bet is to have people with you who can adapt to and perform brilliantly no matter what challenges and opportunities come along the way. Step by step, person by person, hire by hire, seat by seat, Graham gradually assembled a busload of the right people around her.

No matter how successful she became, she maintained a learning mindset: First learn, then lead. She continued stepping forward by getting great people around her, learning from them, and then applying what she learned to make better decisions.

Courage, the saying goes, is not the absence of fear but the ability to act in the presence of fear. Katherine Graham lived and led with fear and anxiety that would never fully abate, no matter how successful, or powerful, or famous, or wealthy she might be or become. Warren Buffett described her as marching forward with knocking knees. Ben Bradlee related that she talked about worrying awake at night, “picking the wool off the blankets.” She paid a hefty Stress and Drudgery Tax, not just in leading through dramatic episodes, but also in shouldering the more routine duties of effective leadership such as giving speeches. Even the prospect of making remarks at the staff holiday party would loom for days or weeks ahead of time, filling her with dread. Graham herself copiously conveyed her inner turmoil; I quick count across her memoir yielded some permutation of words of fear or anxiety (for example, “dread,” “terrified,” “anxious,” “worried,” “fretted,” “frightened,” “nervous,” “anguish”) 289 times in reference to herself.