Matt LeMay

2/ THE FIRST LESSON: Different people have different personal and professional motivations. Some want to immerse themselves in a project, some want to have clear boundaries. Some are motivated by collaboration itself, others are motivated by the product of that collaboration.

3/ FOR EXAMPLE: James needs strict boundaries and constraints to feel both creatively and personally safe. Kirk enjoys the process of open-ended collaboration. Lars wants to create something "innovative". This mirrors several product teams I've worked with!

4/ The band makes assumptions about each other's motivations, and react to those assumptions as if they are facts. For example, they worry that James working shorter hours means he doesn't care about the band. Their reaction, ironically, almost sinks the band entirely.

5/ The takeaway: If you act on your fears and assumptions about other people's beliefs and motivations, there's a good chance you will make those fears come true. Take a step back, check your assumptions, ask "why".

6/ THE SECOND LESSON: If you aren't all on the same page about what you are trying to make, you will probably make something bad.

8/ The takeaway: If an individual part doesn't make sense, evaluate it in relation to the whole. If something sounds good to me and "stock" to you, what does that mean about the way we're thinking about the project overall? The other takeaway: St. Anger is bad.

9/THE THIRD LESSON (AND THE MOST DAMNING FOR ME AS A COACH/CONSULTANT): People providing "expert" consultative services are still *people* who have their own motivations and assumptions.

10/ There's a scene in the movie where the band's therapist starts suggesting song lyrics (!!!!) and it is terrifying to me as a coach/consultant because it lays his own motivations bare soooooo clearly and brutally. He wants to be part of the music itself, to leave HIS mark.

11/ I feel *personally implicated* by this, in part because I recognize similar motivations in myself. I like to leave my mark on things. I have strong opinions not just about the way that work can be done, but also about the work itself.

12/ The takeaway: If an "expert" is doing something that seems weird or out of bounds to you, trust your instincts. Communicate about it. Don't assume that they know better than you.

13/ LAST BUT NOT LEAST: Being unreasonably hard on yourself often results in being SOME KIND OF MONSTER (yowwww) to other people.

14/ This is, to me, the great lesson of Lars Ulrich. Dude is SO full of fear, gets SO upset at himself when he makes a mistake, is SO afraid that other people are judging him harshly even when he is clearly the only person who is even remotely upset about something.

17/ Whenever I make a mistake and start to spiral out thinking about how everybody must hate me now, I try to think about Lars Ulrich. "Hey Matt," I say to myself, "Holding yourself to an impossible standard won't make you better, it will make you Lars Ulrich."

19/ The takeaway: Being impossibly hard on yourself means never being able to see past yourself. Which, in turn, makes you a much worse collaborator.