How to Give Better Feedback Without Losing Trust with Amy Sandler

One of the best ways to build trust with the people that we work with, and especially that work for us, is to actually start by asking for feedback, not giving it.

On today's episode, we talk to Amy Sandler. She's the head coach and podcast host from Radical Candor.

I think when it comes to questions, worry less about like the perfect question and what people will feel more is your curiosity. If I'm coming from that place of curiosity and then I'm actually listening to what the other person is saying. So the real problem with the feedback sandwich is that it's not clear. It's like, oh, hey, Amy, great glasses, terrible presentation, but really nice font. It's like the praise becomes this sort of criticism delivery mechanism. Like, if I just throw it in there, but the person has no idea what you're talking about and it just starts to feel like inauthentic.

Amy Sandler. Welcome to the Above the Business podcast.

Thank you so much, Bradley. I'm excited to chat with you.

Excited to chat with you as well. We love to start with background and origin story. Love people's journeys about kind of where they've been and how they got to where they are now. Really excited to hear yours.

Absolutely. Well, so I'm currently at Radical Candor, where I'm the principal coach. I'm the podcast host. I've had a few different hats at Radical Candor. I've been the chief marketing officer and overseen our content. And my background was in marketing and communications. I got an MBA at Harvard Business School, and then as one does, one gets an MFA in screenwriting. I call that the income minimization path. I don't know that your listeners would be really eager to hear about that, but that's been—

We won't go that path.

We won't go that one. We'll go the other. But it's all coming back, Bradley. It's all coming back because now things like storytelling and mindfulness and emotional intelligence, all the things that I spent quite a bit of time on for the past couple decades have really come to the come to the fore. I might not have known it at the time that that's where the world was going. It was certainly what mattered to me, but just that mix of strategy, of creativity, of problem solving, of managing your own emotions so that you really can be a leader. That's really been my path. And again, for the past 8 years, I've been at Radical Candor. Prior to that, what might be interesting for your listeners is that I was working at YPO, the CEO coaching firm, as well as Vistage. And so my background has really been very much in all sizes of business, but really focusing on leadership and how can we be better leaders of ourselves and the organizations we serve.

That is great. That is great. Well, OK, this is no longer a podcast. It's actually going to be a counseling session with you and I. OK, no, I'm kidding. When you said managing your own emotions to be a better leader, I was like, oh, this is going to be great.

Sign me up. Yeah.

Sign me up for this. OK. All right. So obviously, many of our listeners have read the book Radical Candor. Before we hit record, I mentioned to you that I know in our own program around leadership and their own leadership development that they have really loved it. They get the framework, they get the concept. It's the implementation and actually doing it on a day-to-day basis. When a small business owner doing, I don't know, $3 million in revenue, really trying to move the initiative and move the organization forward wants to adopt the Radical Candor, but they struggle. They struggle with that. I know you probably have seen that. What are the things that typically you've seen where people kind of trip up on it? But then also, what is the antidote to that? How have they been able to kind of work through some of those?

Great question. And aware that, you know, for folks who've, who've read it, fantastic. If, if people haven't yet read Radical Candor, maybe I'll just give a couple of highlights just so we're, we're all on the same page. And in fact, you know, I think One of the hardest things as someone who's really been focused on communications for decades, there's a great quote, which is that the biggest mistake of communication is that it happened. You know, we think that we have said something and we were crystal clear and we were in fact not crystal clear. And so I think especially when we're talking to more than one person and even one person, you know, how can we kind of get on the same page? So I'll use that just as a chance to explain what I mean by Radical Candor. First of all, it's a book by Kim Scott. Kim had worked at Google and at Apple and really bringing a lot of that experience. Kim and I were actually at Harvard Business School together, but I did not know her at the time. I met her kind of years later. And so one of the reasons why I think that Radical Candor as a book, as a framework, and we are now a company, we've been a company for about 8 years leading trainings. We now have a lot of different products based on, you know, what folks need. But I think the reason the idea has stuck and in fact is more important than ever is because at its core, it's a really simple idea. The simple idea that I can care about the people I work with as real human beings, build real relationships at the same time I'm willing to challenge them directly. And I think the reason why this becomes hard, like you said, we might read the book. How many of us sign up for the class or buy the exercise equipment and then we don't do it, right? So there's this mix of awareness and learning and then how do we put it into practice? So one of the reasons why I think both the book and the trainings that we do are so helpful is because we actually give you some practical, tactical tips. And one of the first things that I think is important is a bit of a mindset shift. When I lead sessions, I will often connect with folks, like when you talk about feedback, like, what's your first blink reaction to the word feedback? So I'll say feedback and Bradley, and I like to frame it like the sort of good, the bad, the ugly. So even just you listener thinking about it, like, what's your first reaction? Do you have like a knee-jerk reaction to the word feedback, Bradley?

Oh yeah, defensive.

Yeah. And for you as well as other people or?

Yeah, totally, totally. For me, for me, I, I, I, I am, as I've been told personally before, is that I'm really good in the autopsy of situations. So after the fact, I reflect, I'm like, okay, that was actually, that was actually not too bad. But in the moment, initially, my first initial thing was I kind of push back. I get, I get defensive.

100%. And you know, I really, for me, I just, I like to validate that. Like that doesn't mean there's anything wrong. It's actually the way that our brains are wired, right? We have this negativity bias and we're sort of gonna focus, it feels like a threat, right? Like it feels like a threat to our nervous system. I know you're a fan of learning and of books and frameworks. I don't know if you're familiar with neuroscientist David Rock and he has this SCARF model. I don't know if you've heard it about sort of how our brains are wired. And if I can get it right, so we have, you know, there's a status need, right? So our status is being threatened potentially when we're getting feedback, especially if it's from our boss or if we're, you know, an owner, you know, the people giving us money. There's a certainty need, like we like to know what's happening. And right now we are in a moment where everything feels uncertain. Change is so rapid. There's an autonomy need, like I need to feel like I'm in charge of things. And especially as leaders, I think that's one of the hardest things is to delegate and let go, especially when— very much your identity is like, but I'm the guy. I'm the guy that does the thing, you know? And that's really hard. There's a relatedness thing, which is that we need to connect with people. And then there's a sense of fairness. And if anyone has more than one animal, especially dogs, they're gonna know if like, why did that dog get the, you know, special treat when I didn't? Or a little bit that way, like, why is this person or why is this department potentially being treated this way? So I think just based on what you're saying, sometimes it's helpful For me, when I did a training out of Google called Search Inside Yourself, this was like 12 years ago, in mindfulness and emotional intelligence. And when I did that training, I realized, oh, there is a neuroscience behind why my brain is doing this thing. So I think first of all, just to kind of normalize, we might get defensive. That's, that's one thing when it comes to feedback. And then we start to understand these needs when these people go into these feedback conversations, what's happening. So Just to go back to this idea of caring and challenging, one of the best ways to build trust with the people that we work with, and especially that work for us, is to actually start by asking for feedback, not giving it. Because we know that when we are giving feedback, especially criticism, we, by the way, at Radical Candor, we like to think of feedback as like praise and criticism. And by the way, much more praise giving praise than criticism. But when we are asking for feedback, especially if we have some power, you know, we're the owner, we're the founder, we've got people reporting to us, we want to start by asking for feedback because we want to build that trust, build that safety, help people see that we actually do value this, that this is how we all grow, and I'm kind of walking the walk and talking the talk. So let me pause on that. Like, how does that frame land for you?

Oh, it lands great. First of all, I always, as I take notes, you see me looking down, taking notes, whatever things I circle are things that I'm going to have as some of my takeaways. One of the biggest things you just did for me personally, but I think for our listening audience, is I had not framed my initial defensiveness. For those of you not listening, listening but not watching, kind of putting my hands up as in like, whoa, wait a minute. I had not normalized that. See, I had internally saw that as a flaw. Of me as a leader. Right? And as much as I have tried, and I think I have gotten better at accepting feedback, which I think has made me be better at receiving feedback, or excuse me, giving feedback. We'll talk about that in a second. I had not ever normalized that initial reaction that I have, even if it's internally. But the reality is, I can say it's internally, but people know that they can see it on your body language. You know, they can see the initial part of it. So here's my question around one one thing around the asking for feedback. If I— is there a proper cadence or framework to where I'm asking for the feedback, which I love feedback as praise and criticism? Is there a proper pacing or cadence to that, that makes sense to where, you know, if I did it every day, as an example, it would be too much, right? But maybe once a year, that's probably not proper either. What do we feel like is the right, as a leader in our organization, business owner, entrepreneur, that makes sense?

[Speaker:MAUREEN_CASIMIRAN] Yeah, great question. And I'm really hopeful, and I'm glad it's helpful around the idea of normalizing these behaviors. It doesn't mean we don't ask for feedback. We might not have a defensive response. That's OK. What we don't want is that knowing that we might get a little defensive get in the way of us actually getting the feedback that we need. And so And by the way, the more that we start to do this, the more we start to build up our capacity to do this. So to your point, when I think about practicing radical candor, these kind of two-way back-and-forth conversations, we want this to become frequent. One of the challenges with feedback is that very often it becomes almost like this formal performance review thing. No, I want to kind of reset that to these are conversations that we can have to build trust, highlight what's working well, where things can be improved. And so as a leader, what we recommend is, first of all, with your direct reports, let's say you have a weekly one-on-one or biweekly based on how many, that that is your time. In your one-on-one, that is your time to solicit feedback. We believe that that one-on-one is really in service of that direct report. And so that is a chance for you to get feedback. When it comes to giving feedback, we want to do that more sort of in the moment. We can talk about that. But when it comes to giving— getting feedback, Soliciting feedback. Yeah, I think weekly is great. Biweekly is great. And the other thing I wanna just give an example of to, again, help normalize it, a little mindset shift, is that it doesn't need to be this formal, "And now I am asking for feedback, Bradley," right? This can be at the end of this podcast, me checking in with you, "Hey Bradley, you know, what's something that I could have done that would've been more helpful for your listeners?" Or, "What's an area that we wish we had explored?" Or, "If we were gonna do a follow-up session, where do you want me to go deeper?" Or, "What worked really well, right? So we can just do it right at the end of the podcast. It's fresh. You know, tell me something that you would have liked me to have done differently, and it can be helpful. You know, do you know, you know your listeners well enough, I might not know them well enough, so that would be meaningful for me. Oh, my listeners are really into, you know, specific tips, and so I loved this tip that you gave, and I would have loved even one more tip on asking for feedback, right? So I can't do better until I know like what's working well and what could be improved and why. And so one of the greatest tips of asking for feedback is to not use a yes or no question. Because if you ask, especially someone that you're signing their paycheck, "Hey, anything I could do differently? How am I doing? You know, what, what, any feedback for me?" "Oh no, Amy, you're still perfect. You're still my boss, and I'm just going to keep it." They don't want to give you the feedback, even though they've probably got piles of it. And you might not, as we talked about, want to hear it. So we don't want to let them out by having that yes or no answer. We want it to be an open question, like, you know, What's one way I could have showed up better for you on this podcast? Or, you know, what's one thing that, you know, if you were asking me, you know, Amy, I loved having you as a guest. What's one way I could have helped you feel more, you know, supported on this podcast? You know, something like that. The best questions are going to be the ones that actually get you the kind of feedback you're looking for. And most important, you really wanna reward that person when they give you the feedback. You want to treat it like a gift. Because just think about it for yourself, Bradley. There are probably folks that you have shared your perspective with, given some feedback to, and they have completely ignored it. And you're probably not likely to go back to them. Right? I mean, that's a guess, but that's what I've observed. And so the most important thing, think it's like any relationship. If you ignore it, it's not going to get better. But if you, first of all, make a change if you can fix it. If somebody says in a meeting, "Amy, you're talking so much in meetings, I can't said a word in edgewise. I hear you. It's really important that everyone feels included. So I would love it if at the next staff meeting you could keep an eye on things and let me know how I did. Because often what happens is we then overcorrect. And then at the end of the meeting, I'll be like, how'd it go? What worked well? What could have been a bit better? And they're like, Amy, you didn't say a word the whole meeting. I didn't say don't ever talk again, right? Because often we kind of overcorrect. So you want this to be frequent.

Wow, you just went in my head. That's what I'll do. They're like, Bradley, you will just throw a bomb into the meeting and then it takes the whole thing off. And then I'm like, okay, fine. Next time I just sit there and I'm like, all right, y'all talk. I don't have anything to say. It's like being a child. But no, it's actually so true. And I think that I relate, but I think so many of our listening audience will relate to this because of the roles that we sit as ambitious, driven entrepreneurs. You saw it a ton with Vistage and YPO all the time. We have the best, and we want to be great leaders, Amy. We want to be. It's not that we don't. Sometimes we just have to learn how to be able to do it. You even just put on off the cuff kind of a masterclass in asking questions. So I'm going to come back to another question around giving feedback in just a second. "Before I do that, I have to ask this question: How do I get better at asking better questions?" Oh, I love that question, Bradley.

And one thing, again, just to sort of give ourselves a bit of a break, I think underneath that high-driving, high-performing, high-achieving, it's like we are so invested. And for those of us listening, I did a TEDx talk on, it was called "I Give Up," but it was basically like, how do you get out of overthinking and perfectionism? And we are our harshest critics. I won't I won't make that assumption for all of your folks, but I know when you're high achieving like that, you're gonna be looking at the time when maybe it didn't go quite as well, not the times that have gone well. And so I think when it comes to questions, worry less about like the perfect question and what people will feel more is your curiosity. People will feel more that you're with me, whether I say the words just right, if I'm coming from that place of curiosity, and then I'm actually listening to what the other person is saying. I think one of the biggest challenges, just to build on what you're saying, the pressures that your audience faces, is that we've got so many different things. And very often when we are talking to a team member, our mind isn't with them. We are thinking about the other things, and we're thinking, how quickly can I get through this conversation? And then we end up having to clean up the mess because then they don't feel heard and we rush them, or we go right to solutions. And I'll just share a quick story. I know, you know, we wanna keep this tight, but I think this might be instructive, which is that I led a lot of sort of mindful listening exercises with CEOs. And it's just 2 minutes, 2 minutes of your being present with that other person. And at the end of that exercise, I had a CEO say, you know, I'm realizing after this session But by my rushing or my jumping in, in that silence, I am not allowing that person to really fully step into their power and their potential because of my discomfort in that silence. I'm looking to fill it. I'm looking to go, go, go. And I'm not actually trusting them to answer the question, to resolve it themselves. And I'm creating a cycle where they keep coming to me. We recently had executive coach Muriel Wilkins, who has a podcast called Coaching Real Leaders from Harvard Business Review on our Radical Candor podcast. And I asked her that question and she said she really tries to keep it simple and to reply to whatever that person is saying. You know, a kid just asked, "Why is the sky blue?" You know, I think sometimes as leaders, and we've got these minds going a mile a minute, and we almost overcomplicate our questions. And the example that she showed as an example of how you meet that person with a great question is She was working with a leader who felt like they didn't belong in this executive suite, sort of in the room. And she asked, "What was it that made you feel like you didn't belong?" And it was just a reflection back and just to ask them to go a little deeper and get specific. And that kind of unlocked things for this person 'cause they were like, "Oh, well, I was invited to be in that room and they did ask me for my opini—" Just the very act of me being in that room. So I think, you know, one of the beauties of the simplicity of the Radical Candor framework is what I would go with questions is that often the simplest question is better. You know, "I'd love to hear more. Tell me more.

What's an example?" Wow. Yeah, it goes back to— there's the curiosity part, which we talked about, but then there's the simplicity part. It doesn't have to be a Harvard Business Review level question. It can just be a very simple question. Yeah, I love that. I love that. I love that. That is fantastic. I think you also, when what you shared about not having to pick the right, the perfect words, almost lets us off the hook a little bit to go, okay, okay, I don't have to do that. But there is a genuine curiosity that matters. And I was thinking, I had, well, today's Wednesday. I had a very tight window on Monday, abnormal. I had taken vacation the previous week, which was nice, but I came back had some meetings on Friday, and then Monday was slammed, very almost back to back to back in a very unusual day, a Monday. And I found myself increasingly, as the meetings went on, I found myself increasingly short-tempered, not clear-headed, did not show up in the rest of those meetings as the day went on in the right way, and my curiosity went to zero. There was no curiosity in those meetings. It was just, what do I need to get across here in these meetings? Not that every meeting always has to be a question scenario per se. But I wasn't opening space for the people that I was meeting with on Monday. So there's an awareness. Is there any type of trick or trigger that you've worked with CEOs and leaders to, like right before they step into a meeting, before the meeting, or anything maybe even after the meeting as far as a recalibration for that scenario where somebody is going from, say, meeting to meeting to meeting, context switching quite a bit?

Absolutely. I mean, and there's so much research of how the actual cost of context switching. So as someone who's taught mindfulness to CEOs, you know, it's become obviously such a well-known word, but it doesn't have to be so complicated. It can be simply, you know, one thing I like to do is even just put my hands on my belly and and just actually, like, take one big breath. You know, just, there's literally connecting back into my body, like, feeling my feet on the floor. Sometimes I'll even, like, 'cause I teach qigong, just I'll, like, rub the palms of my hands. There's something about just, like, coming back into the body and just couple of breaths. I think everyone needs to find something that works for them because that's gonna be the most important thing. But if you're You know, for me, if I just know, like, whether it's almost like a repetitive phrase in my mind, like, you know, I like to say, "Get curious, not furious." Like, that kind of helps me shift. But there's nothing like just a couple of deep breaths, like even actually just like counting on the inhale and the exhale. For folks who are athletes, or, you know, we sort of do this naturally when we're under other types of pressure. And so kind of bringing that into this space. The other thing I'll do is I'm just someone who loves just physically getting up and going for a little walk just to like actually have my body shift. So even if I'm going from meeting to meeting, you know, maybe it's just an intentional breath and even a sigh, but just some of those things that can actually just like literally reset, reset your brain and your body. And breath I've found is just like the quickest way to do it.

Oh, that's, that's, that's—

'Cause so often we're holding our breath and we're not even aware of it.

Oh, I very much. Very much so. I am. There's no question. All right, so this is an important conversation. Whenever I was, I don't know, maybe even in college, I guess I was first shared the idea of the compliment sandwich. Oh, you've got something, you've got to give somebody some feedback. And so what you do is you take a compliment and then the feedback, and then you wrap it with a compliment on the— All right, but somebody listening to this is going to walk into a one-to-one that's going to be challenging. I'm not talking about letting someone go. I'm just meaning that there's some legitimate feedback, Amy, I have with a team member that works for me that it's not cutting it. There's an opportunity here that we really need to raise the level of whatever that may be. How do we do that right? How do we balance in giving feedback with someone without defaulting down to the compliment sandwich Yes, 100%.

So the real problem with the feedback sandwich is that it's not clear. It's like, oh hey, Amy, great glasses, terrible presentation, but really nice font. It's like the praise becomes this sort of criticism delivery mechanism. Like, if I just throw it in there, but the person has no idea what you're talking about and it just starts to feel like, you know, inauthentic. You're just saying these things to really get to the point, which is that you didn't like the presentation. Okay, so that's thing one. Thing two is that when you are practicing radical candor, we want this to be much more frequent. It doesn't have to be 5 pieces of praise to 1 piece of criticism or 7 pieces of praise. You know, it's not like a paint-by-number thing, but the point is to focus on the good stuff because there is so much good stuff happening. And I think the reason why we also default to the feedback sandwich is because we are not clearly talking about what made the thing either good or not so good. So, you know, praise versus criticism. We use a model we call CORE: Context, Observation, Result, Expected Next Step. People might be familiar with SBI as a model from the Center for Creative Leadership. We've added this idea of a next step. Now, the reason why I think this is so helpful is to, before the conversation, am I— what is the context? Context of the feedback. So for example, I got some criticism from my boss. So it was in the meeting, that's the context. What was the observation? He observed that I interrupted my team. He didn't say, Amy, you're a jerk. He didn't say, Amy, you're a terrible person. He just observed the behavior, right? Or the work product. What was the result? This is where both our praise and our criticism fall short. Like, do you know this person well enough to know why it matters? This isn't about nitpicking. And then you did this, and then you did this, and then— like, what is the really meaningful result here? The meaningful result here is you lost their respect. That's a big deal. Now, what I like to think about when I think about these conversations is that sometimes it might be really clear to that other person, the thing that happened, and now we can sort of pretty quickly move forward to next steps. But very often it might not be clear because they might have been in a very different meeting than you. They might need some time to get on the same page as you. They might see it very differently. There might be a reason why there were all these errors in their report, and it was actually because of the technology, not because they didn't, you We don't know. So having some space to actually have a back and forth and be like, "What's your take on this? Once you've landed on that, what is a good next step?" And getting alignment on that, because that I feel like is where most of these conversations fall flat, is that we are leaving this conversation thinking that there's going to be an email from them as a follow-up, and they have no idea that that's the next step. And so getting clarity, and by the By the way, having a follow-up meeting to have some more back and forth is a fine next step. I think sometimes leaders, again, of the pressure we put on ourselves, feel like we have to have every problem solved in that one conversation. That's true. And some of them are, some of them might be like, you know what? Thank you for bringing them to my attention. I'm going to do a little digging. Let's check in on that next Tuesday, right? So that idea of really getting alignment on the thing that happened, sort of the feedback, and then how can we move it into development? You know, if it's a peer, if it's someone who is very autonomous, they might not want you to tell them what that next step is. They might want to actually tell you. You know, maybe you need to co-create it, but that we're on the same page of where are we going to go from here? What's that next step? I love that.

OK. As I was preparing for this interview, a couple of the questions I wanted to ask, but there was one big one as I reflected. I did actually take a moment to reflect ahead of time on the model And what was one of the parts that kind of on my own journey, but also maybe I think was representative of maybe potentially other people. And there was this idea of how do I challenge directly? I'm the leader. I don't want to challenge in a way that shuts them down. Because my name is— I'm signing on the checks as the business owner, the entrepreneur. Depending, especially in a small business, Amy, it can be really difficult to where kind of the example we were talking about in the meetings where like, I can just bombard a meeting and it just takes it off the rails. But how do I challenge in a way that is direct, challenging directly, but I'm also not shutting them down? I'm working through CORE, but I don't want them to just be like, OK, whatever, whatever you What do you say? kind of thing, right? Don't want them to throw their hands up and overcorrect themselves too. I want to be able to create that environment to where I can challenge and I can be honest. But at the same time, it doesn't shut down my direct report that is under me.

Thoughts? Well, it's a great question. And I think it's really the beauty of the Radical Candor framework is this idea of caring and challenging. Understanding the mistakes that we make, either it's like what you were talking about, challenging directly can come off as obnoxious aggression where you are shutting down. People don't feel, what you're really talking about is psychological safety, right? That people feel safe and they can be candid, but also that they can make mistakes and you're there to help them grow. There's other mistakes we make, ruinous empathy, where we care but we don't challenge. And I think sometimes that can happen too. And as leaders, we become so afraid to say the hard thing that finally by the time 6 months later, then it lands as obnoxious aggression and your direct report is, "Why did you never tell me?" Probably the most toxic behavior of all is sort of the meeting after the meeting. And we call that one manipulative insincerity, where we're kind of talking about people, not to them. And we all make these mistakes all the time. You know, people, I don't want you to sort of put people into boxes and personality types. Like, these are behaviors. So I just wanna name, first of all, that we all make these mistakes, and it's even more impactful when you are the leader. So how do we create a culture of radical candor? And so just to reemphasize the importance of soliciting feedback, especially as leaders, to show that you're open to this feedback, really celebrating it when you get it. So for example, if I'm the leader of an organization and someone says, I'm shutting down the meetings by talking too much, I share that with the whole team and I say, hey, I got this feedback. This is really important. This is a growth area for me. I'm gonna keep working on it. Let me know how it's going. You know, you start to sort of celebrate your own mistakes. But one thing that we haven't talked about, Bradley, is the importance of sharing our stories about a time when we received radical candor and what does radical candor look like for us? Because it models vulnerability. But the reason why I think it's really important in what you're talking about is I would get really curious about about what does Radical Candor look like for that direct report, for example. It is my job as your leader to challenge you and also to care for you. And I'd love to know what does Radical Candor look like for you, whether it's a previous leader that you've had. Tell me a story about a leader you had that really was effective for you. What specifically did they do? What does care personally and challenge directly look like for for you? 'Cause it's gonna look different for each of us. And the more we start to understand that and actually get really specific about those behaviors, then we can model it and then check in and say, hey, you know, Amy, I was giving you some criticism yesterday and I wanted to check in. How did it land for you? Because maybe you thought you were being obnoxiously aggressive and turned out it landed for me as ruinous empathy. I didn't even hear a challenge, right? So just this idea idea that it is measured, Radical Candor is measured not at my mouth as the speaker, but at the other person's ear. So check in and ask, "How did what I say land?

How could I have done it better?" I'm gonna personally go back and listen to the last 2 minutes of what you just shared. That was phenomenal. You know what I was thinking about as you were sharing that? I was thinking about how much that I want my organizations and the companies I'm a part of to really embrace the vernacular and the understanding of radical candor and how it's such a contrast from brutal honesty. I don't want brutal honesty. I don't want you after this podcast to be brutally honest with me. I want you to have radical candor about how I can be better, et cetera, but not brutally honest and actually embedding that into the organization. In fact, that'd be my last question is what do you recommend for that business owner that's listening to it, that leader that wants to take that? How do they go about, I mean, sure, they could have the team read the book. Maybe that would be part of it. But outside of that, how do you recommend that they go and try to embed that into the organization? Great question.

Well, my, our Chief Revenue Officer would be sad if I didn't say, "Hire us! We'd love to come to your companies." So of course, you know, we do those kinds of sessions. We have actually e-courses. We've got the book. Of course, there's great, you know, discussion guide. There's a lot of free resources on our website, RadicalCandor.com. So lots that folks can uncover, but a couple of quick tips. First of all, if you are someone who maybe leans more on challenge directly and is someone who might say in air quotes, "In the spirit of Radical Candor," and then, "You're an idiot. That was terrible." No, that is the spirit, to your point, of brutal honesty or obnoxious aggression. So it does not get you out of jail free, think about it as compassionate candor. So there's that reframe of like, can I have that compassion and can I have that candor? I would really reiterate the importance of what does radical candor look like for me and for the folks I work with? Because it is gonna look and feel different. One of the things that we always do is we share stories about times when we received radical candor and we really try to get granular or like, what does care personally look like? And very often, just to cut to the chase, the person took the time and they were clearly invested in my success. And the time doesn't have to mean 100 hours of a trust fall. It's, they're present with me. When they're with me, they're with me. And they're also willing to tell me the hard thing. I have found that trust is built when we actually do lean into these conversations. And I think for me, as someone who struggled with ruinous empathy, when I think about the cost and, and actually a, a friendship, a work relationship that I lost because I was afraid to tell this person what they needed to know, that pushes me to practicing radical candor. So really thinking about times I've received radical candor, mistakes I've made when it comes there. And then I like to think about this idea of almost like pockets of excellence. Like you might not start with your whole team. Your whole company, your whole organization, but maybe you start with a couple of folks in your org. You start by soliciting feedback. You start sharing their story. You maybe start small. You start with a couple direct reports and start from there. I think the beauty of a small business is that you can actually do culture change. One of the things we'll often say is that relationships don't scale, but culture does. In a small business, you've got a little bit more of an advantage to sort of influence that culture. And you as the leader, that's what people are gonna be looking at. At. Is this person just saying they've read Radical Candor, or are they actually soliciting my feedback and giving specific and sincere praise as well as kind and clear criticism?

I heard it recently about that last comment. Somebody said, yeah, it was actually a friend to me. He said, he said, yeah, you read the book, but have you realized it?

Oh, I love that. Wasn't that good? That's really good.

I can't take credit for that one, but I love it. Because we were talking about it, we were talking about different books. We were having a little coffee meeting a couple months ago, and we shared an affinity for a book. And he said, well, you've read it, but have you realized it? And I was like, whoa, I don't know about that, actually. What a great question. And I thought that was so true. So for our listening audience, you may have read Radical Candor, but have you realized that? For myself, I'm going to go back. I think I'm going to to re-read the book, revisit some of the concepts. Amy, I had very high expectations for this podcast, and you exceeded those expectations. So thank you so much for everything you shared. People do want to connect with you and the Radical Candor Company.

Where would you point them to? Absolutely. Well, radicalcandor.com is our website. You can find us on LinkedIn. Certainly, you can email me, amy@radicalcandor.com. And I love that idea. You know, look, this is just another mindset shift. This is a practice. I teach this because it really holds me accountable to practicing. And so like any behavior change, don't feel like you have to do it alone. We've got a, actually we've got a community. You could go to community. I think it's community.radicalcandor.com. But if we can find sort of success partners in this, like your buddy that you had coffee with, that's the best way is, you know, help us hold each other accountable to practicing.

This is amazing. Amy, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

Oh, thanks for having me, Bradley. I love the conversation. [MUSIC] [MUSIC]