Executive coach Ada Chen Rekhi discusses why unwritten professional norms and appearance standards hold back underrepresented leaders in Silicon Valley.
“It turns out that in a career context, it's so unsafe for your manager to turn to a young woman on the team and say, here, let me give you feedback on your physical appearance and how it affects your competence and how you're perceived in the workforce, that the vast majority of them will just never do it. Cause there's no winning”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading:
filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard
(the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Ada Chen Rekhi
Opinion
The vast majority of people do not need an executive coach
“My hot take is that for the vast majority of people, they probably do not need a coach.”
Ada Chen RekhiApr 16, 2023▶ 42:42How to make better decisions and build a joyful career | Ada Chen Rekhi (Notejoy, LinkedIn)
Insight
Co-founding a company with your spouse has no middle ground
“What I found is that it seems like it either goes really well. Or it goes really badly, and there's kind of no in-between.”
Ada Chen RekhiApr 16, 2023▶ 1:07:39How to make better decisions and build a joyful career | Ada Chen Rekhi (Notejoy, LinkedIn)
AssertionContradicted
Human executive function peaks at age 30, says Ada Chen Rekhi
“Executive function, which is your ability to make decisions and plans and be thoughtful, peaks at the age of 30.”
Ada Chen RekhiApr 16, 2023▶ 12:42How to make better decisions and build a joyful career | Ada Chen Rekhi (Notejoy, LinkedIn)
Insight
Early careers should prioritize hypothesis-driven exploration over exploitation
“And when I think about explore and exploit for early career, it's all about exploration. You really haven't experienced that much, but you're doing it with a thesis. You're doing it kind of with that growth mindset where you have a hypothesis.”
Ada Chen RekhiApr 16, 2023▶ 26:52How to make better decisions and build a joyful career | Ada Chen Rekhi (Notejoy, LinkedIn)
AssertionSupported
Half of coaching clients hire the first coach they interview
“I talked to over 80 people about their experiences with a coach. I talked including coaches, including founders, including executives, and there's this sort of shocking data point in there where half of people that found their coach literally went with the fir…”
Ada Chen RekhiApr 16, 2023▶ 47:39How to make better decisions and build a joyful career | Ada Chen Rekhi (Notejoy, LinkedIn)
Insight
Generous interpretation of feedback is crucial when co-founding with a spouse
“The ability to be really truth seeking and kind of take the most respectful interpretation when you're giving feedback to focus on trying to get to a smart, good outcome that benefits the business. I think that's actually one of the most crucial things that yo…”
Ada Chen RekhiApr 16, 2023▶ 1:10:18How to make better decisions and build a joyful career | Ada Chen Rekhi (Notejoy, LinkedIn)
Made with StarZero
Turn any episode into a week of clips.
This entire site, over 300 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable,
runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the
moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.
We use essential cookies to make the site work. With your permission we
also use analytics cookies (Google Analytics and Mixpanel) to understand
usage and improve StarZero. See our Cookie Policy.