Jensen Huang on not giving up on people 🖤

    by Evira: Jensen Huang

    Jensen Huang puts it so plainly: demanding excellence is easy, but actually developing it in someone else is the real work. He’d rather push you, 'torture' you into greatness, as he says, than give up on you, because he believes people can learn. He went from cleaning bathrooms to CEO, so he’s proof that capability isn’t fixed. That moment when something finally clicks? He says don’t give up right before it happens 🖤

    Transcript (en)

    You once told me that you really didn't like firing people and very seldom did it. Can you elaborate on that? Well, I'd rather improve you than give up on you. You know, when you fire somebody, you're kind of saying, well, you know, a lot of people say, well, it wasn't your fault, or I made the wrong choice, or... There are very few jobs. Look, I used to clean bathrooms, and now I'm the CEO of a company. I think you can learn it. I'm pretty certain you can learn this. And there are a lot of things in life that I believe you can learn, and you just have to be given the opportunity to learn it. I had the benefit of watching a lot of smart people do a lot of things. I'm surrounded by 60 people. They're doing smart things all the time. And they probably don't realize it, but I'm learning constantly from every single one of them. And so I don't like giving up on people because I think they could improve. And so it's kind of tongue-in-cheek, tongue-in-cheek, but people know that I'd rather torture them into greatness. That was the phrase that I was hoping to uncover. Yeah, I remember you mentioned that. Yeah, so I'd rather torture you into greatness because I believe in you. And I think coaches that really believe in their team torture them into greatness. And oftentimes, they're so close. Don't give up. They're so close. Greatness kind of, it comes all of a sudden one day, it's like, I got it. Do you know what I'm saying? That feeling that you didn't get it yesterday, and all of a sudden, one day, something clicked, and you, oh, I got it. Could you imagine you gave up just that moment right before you got it? So I don't want you to give up on that, so I'll just keep torturing you.