Anthony Onesto uses Jar Jar Binks as a cautionary tale about leaders who surround themselves with yes-men instead of people willing to give honest feedback. He recommends one-on-ones, training managers to receive criticism, rewarding candid input, and a disagree-and-commit culture once decisions are made.
Hey, everyone, this is Anthony Ernesto and this is my Burn the Box drop for this week. I am talking about leadership and I was inspired by another podcast that talks about Jar Jar Binks in Star Wars. I am a huge, huge Star wars fan. I love Ahsoka that just came out. I love Obi Wan. All of these Star wars kind of tentacles that are happening are very, very cool. The Mandalorian, of course, Boba Fett. So I don't know if you know the story. The story around Jar Jar Binks is if you're not a Star wars, it was a character in Episode one, which was the Phantom Menace. And it wasn't a beloved character in the Star wars universe. And for whatever reason, just it felt like it was a character that didn't need to be in the storyline. And there's legend that says it was George Lucas's idea to put Jar Jar Binks in because he had surrounded himself with folks that would not provide him radically candid feedback or challenge him directly, so to speak, that Jar Jar Binks actually was able to manifest in the movie. So started thinking, thinking through, and I love the podcast Nudge. And I thought it was really interesting feedback thinking about this idea of radical candor about leadership. This whole concept of if you're doing something and you have your team is silent and not giving you feedback, that that's not the greatest situation you could get into, a Jar Jar Bing situation. If you're putting a movie together or any type of leadership in that you want feedback from your teams, you want to build an environment that encourages people to provide candid feedback. And now have been big fans here at Susie, Me Personally, since 2008 of Radical Candor, Kim Scott's book and the premise around radical candor, if you're not familiar with it, call it compassionate candor in other places is that you have to care personally, but also challenge folks. And I talk about this all the time. I was with a company years ago that just really cared about each other. It was like a. It was a great environment. Still friends with a lot of folks that worked there. But it was very rare that anyone would ever challenge you in a meeting or something that you said. And so you had this discharge, our bank situation where you'd be in a meeting and you'd say some things and you thought you were the, you know, hey, I got everyone's buy in. And then you would find out not everyone bought into it. It was just this, this culture that was there that didn't like that challenge directly. And I think the important thing as a leader is to get feedback. Now I'm not suggesting a pure democracy because we know in pure democracy nothing gets done. But I am suggesting that you build an environment that if you're say hey, this is my strategy. This is what, what does everyone think about this? And that you are getting feedback from your team. These are folks smarter than you in the areas that they're good at. You're going to want their feedback and you want to build an environment where you have that feedback. Now once you make a decision, Amazon has something called disagree and commit. If you have to also educate or set the expectation to folks that hey, you need to disagree and commit if I'm going to ask for your feedback, but at the end of the day I am the decision maker. I'm going to make it with all the inputs, but I'm going to make a decision here. You have to agree and commit to it. And it's so important because you don't want to be in an environment of yes where people are just yes ing you. You could get into a jar jar bank. So how do you implement Radical Candle? Well first you have to have open communication channels. Absolutely. Giving folks avenues if they're not comfortable in a broader meeting or a broader team meeting in your one on one sort of asking and prompting them and making them feel comfortable and even rewarding for folks. Rewarding folks for giving you feedback. And again you could do it in a way where you set the expectation at the very begin set your intentions, I want your feedback. But ultimately know this is my decision and that even if you disagree with my decision, my, my ask for for the team is that you're going to commit. We have to train your managers. We have to train our folks in HR and our leadership to receive and give feedback and make it an essential managerial skill. And then the second is lastly sorry is act on on feedback, right. Showing that you're willing to make changes based on the feedback received. So sometimes you will get an important piece of feedback and you're like wow, really thought of that. Or I wasn't thinking I was too high level. I wasn't thinking at a grounded level. So my ultimate point here, again with this burn the box drop which correlates to the LinkedIn blog post, is that the lack of feedback equates to poor leadership. You want that feedback. You don't want to have the situation of Jar Jar Binks in your movies. It's just these. It illustrates the dangers of making decisions especially in a vacuum. But again you want to make sure that you're setting the intention. I want your feedback. But no, ultimately, this is my decision as the team leader. And that if you disagree, you have to disagree and commit. That's my quick drop. We'll see you next time.
