Radical Candor: Communication at Work

What do bosses do anyways? On this episode of the Radical Candor podcast, we're starting a new series to answer that question! Is it a manager’s job to go to meetings? Send emails? Tell people what to do? Are they supposed to work alongside their teams and carry part of the workload, or dream up strategies and expect other people to implement them? At the end of the day, a boss’s job is to guide a team to achieve results. However, depending on the size of your team, that process could look very different. Today we’re going to talk about managers of small teams and we’re going to define “small” as a team of 10 people or less. Listen to learn three key things every manager of small teams needs to know. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kim, Jason and Amy discuss the clear message quiet quitting is loudly sending to bad bosses and managers of managers. We know that relationships don’t scale, but culture does. This means that while you can’t have a close relationship with every person who reports to the people who report to you, practicing Radical Candor with the people you manage can impact how they interact with the people they manage and so on. On the other hand, if toxic stew is flowing from the top and being passed down from executives to managers of managers to individual contributors it should come as no surprise that people in this type of environment are disengaged at work. So, how do you fix it? Listen to find out! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Once your idea has been implemented, you probably think you're done with this whole Get Sh*t Done Wheel thing — but there’s one more step, Learn. On this episode of the Radical Candor Podcast, Kim, Jason and Amy talk about how creating a culture of learning can make it safe for people to fail, help mitigate future mistakes and ensure everyone knows how to repeat success. Sounds simple, right? Not so fast. There are two things that can get in the way of learning. Listen to find out what they are! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Once everyone is on board with your great idea, it’s time for action, which brings us to step 6 of the Get Shit Done Wheel. On this episode of the Radical Candor Podcast, Kim, Jason and Amy discuss the good, the bad and the ugly as it relates to the implementation of that decision you’ve just persuaded everyone to get behind. Listen to learn how to toggle between leading and implementing personally. You can't abandon the first for the second. You have to integrate the two. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Once a decision is made, you’ve got to get people on board, which brings us to step 5 of the Get Sh*t Done Wheel — Persuade. While getting others to accept your idea might feel like a foregone conclusion, persuasion isn’t easy, and it’s important to get it right. What’s more, persuasion at this stage of the GSD Wheel can feel unnecessary and make the decider resentful of people on the team who aren’t fully in agreement. Kim, Jason and Amy discuss why expecting others to implement a decision without being persuaded that it’s the right thing to do is a recipe for terrible results and why it's vital to persuade people (like your friend's Uncle Scrammy) that you've done your homework. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kim, Jason and Amy discuss how to make a decision after you've listened, clarified and debated your idea. Step 4 of the Get Shit Done Wheel, decide, is all about pushing the decisions into the facts. The Radical Candor Podcast team outlines 4 steps to follow when making decisions once you have shoved all ego — especially your own — out of the way. They also talk about the pitfalls of unconscious bias, the perils of skipping steps 1-3 and how to avoid garbage can decision-making. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Amy and Jason discuss managers who have low, almost non-existent involvement in their team’s work, aka absentee managers; those with extremely (maybe excruciatingly) close involvement, aka micromanagers; and thought partners — the ones who empower, enable and encourage their teams to do the best work of their lives. While a lot of us have tendencies to act in absentee or micromanager mode, it’s hard for us to want to look at ourselves that way. Listen to this episode if you want to understand how to be a true thought partner. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We discuss the steps to follow for a successful debating process. If you skip the debate phase, you’ll make worse decisions, you’ll be unable to persuade everyone who needs to implement, and you’ll ultimately slow down or grind to a halt. Kim, Jason, Amy and producer Brandi discuss a time when a debate went awry and what they should have done instead. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We're welcoming back to the podcast Russ Laraway, author of the book When They Win, You Win: Being a Great Manager is Simpler Than You Think, coming out on June 7, 2022. You can pre-order it now! You likely know Russ best as the OG co-host with Kim of season one of the Radical Candor Podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's time for part two of how to clarify your thinking for yourself and others as part of the Get Sh*t Done Wheel (listen to part one). On this episode of the Radical Candor podcast, Kim, Jason and Amy discuss how to use staff meetings and think time as ways to clarify your ideas.Radical Candor Podcast Episode At a GlanceAn effective staff meeting has three goals: it reviews how things have gone the previous week, allows people to share important updates, and forces the team to clarify the most important decisions and debates for the coming week.That’s it. It shouldn’t be the place to have debates or make decisions. Your job is to establish a consistent agenda, insist that people stick to it, and corral people who go on for too long or who go off on tangents.Here’s the agenda that Kim has found to be most effective:Learn: review key metrics (20 minutes)Listen: put updates in a shared document (15 minutes)Clarify: identify key decisions & debates (30 minutes) In Radical Candor, Kim writes: “In addition to all your regularly planned meetings, people want to talk to you about this or that; urgent matters will arise that you must deal with. When are you supposed to find time to clarify your own thinking, or to help the people who work for you clarify theirs?”“My advice is that you schedule in some ‘Think Time’ [on your calendar], and hold that think time sacred. Let people know that they cannot ever schedule over it. Get really, seriously angry if they try. Encourage everyone on your team to do the same.”Radical Candor Podcast Checklist Avoid the fundamental attribution error by focusing on specifics, not attributes. Instead of saying (or thinking) “What an idiot,” be very clear about what went wrong. Try the CORE model — Context, Observation, Result, nExt stEps. Focus on helping the person fix the problem by providing specifics they can act on, rather than criticizing personality traits that they can’t alter. A well-run meeting can save you time by alerting you to problems, sharing updates efficiently, and getting you all on the same page about what the week’s shared priorities are. Remember, timeboxing is your friend. Take 20 minutes to learn, 15 minutes to listen and 30 minutes to clarify. Schedule Think Time away from your desk. Think Time is a mix of focused thinking and mind-wandering that allows for the kind of problem-solving, creativity and innovative mindset needed to tackle those difficult problems. Try taking a walk and removing distractions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices