Tendencies and Toolkits

On paper, I had no business being in that room.

I was two years into my first job as a user researcher at Facebook and two years out of a graduate program. I was at the bottom of the food chain from a career perspective. And I was invited into a product review with a room of directors and VPs for a product I didn’t even work on.

I was invited because the director knew that in almost every situation, I listen first. And second. And third. And then I ask questions. It probably helped that I sat in the row of desks next to the executive team.

This tendency has been very successful for me. It’s gotten me into rooms I had no business being in.

On a broader scale, your tendencies get you the job. The instincts that kick in when a problem comes your way, the ones you don’t even think about — those are the reason someone hired you. Whether you’re the person who is willing to ask the uncomfortable questions or you’re simply someone who doesn’t get blocked — your instincts are real and they’re probably the strongest contributors to your career so far. But those behaviors are also your defaults, and when you apply a default to every situation, it stops being a strength pretty quickly.

I like to think of this as the difference between tendencies and toolkits. A tendency is the move you make before you consciously decide to make it. A toolkit is broader — it includes the things that don’t come naturally, the things you’ve had to work on or practice throughout your career. The people I’ve admired most aren’t the ones with the strongest tendencies. They’re the ones who know when to set them aside and reach for something less comfortable.

I’ve caught myself leaning into my defaults at the wrong time more often than I’d like to admit. While I’ve become a lot better at speaking up, there’s a decision I keep coming back to — one where I had the context and the conviction to push back, and instead I went quiet. I listened. I let it go. I defaulted to the thing that got me into that Facebook room ten years earlier, except this time the room needed something different from me. It needed me to say “I know we’ve worked on this for a few months, but it’s time to pull the plug.” Instead I sat with what I knew and watched the project go the way I expected it would.

That’s the thing about tendencies. They don’t usually blow up in your face. They just quietly make the wrong call for you, over and over, until you notice the pattern.

This gets even harder when you’re managing a team or building a company. You hire — often unconsciously — for people who reinforce your tendencies rather than complement them.

I’ve worked with teams where the leader was incredibly kind and everyone felt seen and supported. But when I’d check in with people about how things were going, no one could name the problems — not because they didn’t exist, but because it felt culturally uncomfortable to name them. The leader’s kindness had percolated down to everyone and resulted in an inability to be direct with each other.

This meant all feedback was gift-wrapped, meetings skewed more toward social conversations than work topics, and we would hire people who made us feel good instead of making us better.

These tendencies went from attributes of one person to entrenching themselves as social infrastructure.

We’re all being asked to move faster right now. To do more with less. Ship it, automate it, figure it out. And when you’re moving that fast, you don’t choose how to show up — you default. Your tendencies kick in before you’ve had a chance to consider whether it’s the right move. The faster you go, the more you rely on your defaults, and the less you notice when they’re not working.

By the time you notice, the pattern has already cost you — a relationship, a decision, a reputation you didn’t mean to build.

So slow down for 30 seconds this week and ask someone you trust: “what do I do too much of?” You might not like the answer. That’s the point.