Radical Candor

Amy and Kim talk about performance improvement plans (PIPs). When used correctly, performance improvement plans can be valuable if there is a commitment to help the employee improve. However, they are often weaponized by frustrated managers who want to get rid of an employee who is struggling. Listen to find out how to tell the difference.Get all the show notes and resources at radicalcandor.com/podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Amy and Jason answer a listener's question about how to give feedback about nervous laughter. As you may have noticed, we like to laugh on this podcast when we think something is funny. But, did you know that a lot of laughter doesn’t have anything to do with hilarity? In fact, in the absence of an underlying medical condition, laughing is often a stress response — a way for people to regulate their emotions and avoid being overcome with anxiety.Find all the resources and show notes for this episode at radicalcandor.com/podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kim and Amy welcome Amy C. Edmondson, the Novartis professor of leadership and management at the Harvard Business School and author of several books, including The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth and Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well — available now! From managers seeking to inspire their reports to parents wanting to model a healthy failure mindset for their kids, this book will revolutionize how we think about failure.Get all the show notes and resources at RadicalCandor.com/podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kim, Amy and Brandi discuss coming out at work and Amy and Brandi share their stories. In response to an unprecedented spike in discriminatory legislation, The Human Rights Campaign recently declared a state of emergency for LGBTQ+ people in the U.S. Visibility matters — we want folks who might be struggling to know that we see you. That you deserve to be here. And to thrive!Read all of the show notes and episode resources at RadicalCandor.com/podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kim, Amy and Jason discuss Praise, Recognition, Appreciation and Gratitude. Kim also takes on the role of Don Draper to act out a scene from Mad Men's beloved episode "The Suitcase." Listen to learn why — in most cases — "that's what the money is for" is not sufficient recognition or appreciation. (A deep dive into Peggy and Don's complicated relationship is a whole other glass of whiskey not covered in this episode — but if you haven't watched "The Suitcase," it's a must-see. Listen to our bonus episode about the writers and actors strikes.)Read the show notes and find the bonus episode at RadicalCandor.com/podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bullying at work is real. We're dropping a bonus episode from Kim's Just Work podcast featuring a conversation about bullying at work, in Hollywood and within our greater society with co-host Wesley Faulkner and guest Eric Deggans. When someone is bullying you, the person’s goal is to harm you. Telling the person you are being harmed is just going to result in more bad behavior. Ignoring bullies doesn’t work, either. The only way to stop bullying is to create negative consequences for the people doing the bullying.Read the show notes >> Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kim, Amy and Jason discuss feedback sandwiches. These are not the tasty sandwiches beloved by Joey Tribbiani on Friends. While these sandwiches look delicious on the outside, inside they’re stuffed with something you can’t quite identify. But, the sandwich maker hopes the two pieces of artisan bread that hold the mystery meat together will make you accept what’s inside without too many questions. This false promise of emotional novocaine is better known as the feedback sandwich. Here's why you should avoid the feedback sandwich, which Jason calls "the beautiful lie." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Do you trust your employees? Kim and Jason reach into the Radical Candor digital mailbag to answer a question about what to do when an employee starts calling in sick on the regular. Kim and Jason roleplay the situation to get to the bottom of why someone might be pulling a disappearing act.Read the show notes >> Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kim, Jason and Amy discuss the difference between feedback and nitpicking. Kim says, "There is one rule of thumb that applies to criticism in general but is especially good advice when you’re really busy and nerves are frayed. It’s best summed up by advice a friend’s godfather gave her at her wedding. 'If it’s brown flush it down. If it’s yellow let it mellow.' She got married on an island with a poor septic system, and this was a sign by all the toilets. But as her godfather said, 'These are words to live by. If there’s a big stinking problem talk about it before it fouls your relationship. But if it’s a small thing, let it go.'"Go to the show notes >> Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's the most important leadership skill? Kim and Amy welcome C-suite advisor and executive coach Muriel Wilkins to the first Radically Candid Conversation episode of 2023. Kim and Muriel discuss how keeping it real at work can go wrong, what employees want from their leaders today, and the difference between performance and behavior.Muriel Wilkins is a C-suite advisor and executive coach with a nearly 20-year track record of helping senior leaders and teams take their effectiveness to the next level. She is the host of the Harvard Business Review podcast, Coaching Real Leaders and the co-author of Own the Room: Discover Your Signature Voice to Master Your Leadership Presence.Fun fact — Kim, Amy and Muriel all attended Harvard Business School at the same time but did not know each other. Read the show notes >> Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The team delves into a mash-up of Ruinous Empathy and Manipulative Insincerity. Ruinous Empathy—being “nice” but ultimately unhelpful and unkind—is rampant among new managers, including this new manager who wrote to us asking for advice about how to break out of a Ruinous Empathy rut. This new boss also veers into Manipulative Insincerity when they become too tired to care or argue anymore. This person dreamed of being a boss and now realizes it’s nothing like they imagined. Kim and Jason role-play how this new manager could approach a Radically Candid conversation with a direct report. View the show notes >> Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Clean escalation dictates managers not allow people to talk about one another to them behind each other’s backs and not engage in office gossip. Kim, Amy and Jason discuss how to make work less like junior high by implementing something Fred Kofman's clean escalation. The opposite of clean escalation is Manipulative Insincerity — talking about people instead of talking to them. When you triangulate, you end up creating politics. Each side becomes suspicious that you’re talking behind their back (which you are). The two begin to distrust each other and a toxic relationship develops.Read the show notes >> Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kim, Jason and Amy discuss another upsetting trend in the workplace — the “oops, just kidding!” job offer. The team emphasizes the importance of remembering that the people you are hiring are real human beings with loved ones, bills and responsibilities. You’re not trying them on like a pair of shoes you can discard later if they’re not the right fit. It’s important to get hiring right and Radical Candor has a 5-step strategy to set you up for success.Go to the show notes >> Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kim, Jason and Amy discuss how the fundamental attribution error makes us more likely to use personality attributes to explain someone else’s behavior rather than considering our own behavior or situational factors that were probably the real cause of the behavior. This is where the "not about personality" part of Radical Candor comes into play. Plus, Jason introduces us to the little evil translator inside his head that makes him hear feedback as: "You're terrible. You're completely incompetent. There's no possible way you're going to succeed. It's a miracle that you managed to tie your own shoes to the office this morning." Same? Listen and nod along.Read the show notes >> Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you’re the boss, you’re kind of an emotional shock absorber for your team. You’ve got to be able to deal with other people’s emotions. When we communicate, we communicate on an emotional plane and a rational plane at the same time. If you as the boss dismiss all emotional signals as unprofessional you’re not going to communicate very well. Showing compassion is real work, and, like all real work, it is rewarding and also taxing. In general, we undervalue the emotional labor of being the boss. But this emotional labor is not just part of the job; it’s the key to being a good boss. On this episode of the Radical Candor podcast Kim, Jason and Amy discuss emotional labor through the lens of a scenario sent to us by one of our listeners looking for guidance on how to avoid being a ShamWow for everyone on their team.Read the show notes >> Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kim, Jason and Amy dig into the virtual career advice mailbag and answer questions from Radical Candor listeners and readers. What happens when people think you're too young to lead? How can you stop paying the a**hole tax? How can you be more present at work when everything is stressful all of the time? Listen to find out!Go to the show notes >> Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Quiet Hiring, Turnover Contagion and Layoff Survivor Guilt can lead to a culture of fear. Kim, Jason, Amy and Brandi discuss how when people are working out of fear, they start to avoid taking risks. They learn less, they grow less, they innovate less, and they become less than they could be.The way you treat people when times are tough determines whether you’ll get their best effort, a perfunctory effort, or an effort to sabotage you. When you treat people like cogs in a machine, you’ll get no more than you demand, and you create an incentive to break the machine.See the show notes >>Radical Candor Podcast Checklist If you suddenly find yourself experiencing Quiet Hiring, talk to your manager about how you can leverage your new responsibilities toward your professional development goals. It’s also appropriate to ask how you’ll be compensated for doing additional work. When you do have information that affects your team, commit to delivering it as soon as possible in a way that’s kind and clear. Allow the pe

Have you experienced a layoff? Jason hosts this episode of the Radical Candor podcast and interviews Amy, Kim and Brandi about layoffs. The team discusses layoffs from a few different perspectives — the most important one is the impact on people who are being laid off. The emotional and financial toll of being laid off is real. Amy says, "Looking back on it, it was a huge transformational time that set my life up in a way that I really wanted. But it felt like absolute sh*t in the process."See the show notes >> Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kim, Jason and Amy discuss absentee management and quiet firing. While these two things can feel the same to the person experiencing them, the thing that makes them different is the intention behind the behavior. Quiet firing happens when managers allow employees to have toxic experiences at work as a way to get them to quit. On the other hand, a more pervasive problem is well-intentioned bosses who practice absentee management. They’re that ghost boss who is rarely seen or heard from by their direct reports. What can you do if you work in this kind of environment? Listen to the episode to learn more.Radical Candor Podcast Checklist Don’t hire people and never talk to them again. Being a hands-off manager is different than being an absentee manager. All managers should be having regular 1:1 meetings with their direct reports, actively soliciting feedback and having regular Career Conversations. Don’t be a jerk. Quiet firing is gaslighting at its worst and junior high behavior at its best. It’s is no way to b

A classic example of a micromanaging helicopter boss is Bill from the 1999 movie Office Space, the bad boss who spawned thousands of memes. He roams around the cubicle farm monitoring everyone’s activity and stops by to scold workers for minor mistakes like forgetting to put the cover sheet on their TPS reports.On this episode of the Radical Candor podcast, Kim, Jason and Amy discuss how to tell if the "helpful" guidance you're giving your team is actually veering off into micromanaging. If you want to be a kick-ass boss instead of having team members who want to kick your ass, this episode is a must-listen!Read the show notes at RadicalCandor.com/Podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices