Stop Being Nice: The C.L.E.A.R. Method for Earning Respect

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If you want to be a terrible leader and have nobody listen to you, the biggest mistake you can make isn't saying the wrong thing. It's refusing to tell people the truth. Every time you soften the feedback and let someone walk out believing this looks good when it doesn't, you're just avoiding the hard conversation that you eventually need to have. I'm going to give you a 4-step framework that makes hard conversations easier, and I'll show you the one conversation almost every leader avoids, even though it's the one their team or the people in their lives need the most. I'm Codie Sanchez. This is The Big Deal Podcast. Let's get into it. If this show has ever saved you from a bad deal, a bad day, do me one favor. Hit subscribe. It's free. It takes 2 seconds. And it's the single biggest thing that helps us book better guests and make this better for you. All right. I want to start talking about this. Call it the vanity test. There's one test you need to run before giving anyone feedback. And there's no one who ran this vanity test better than Steve Jobs. There's an incredible story, basically. So Steve had this designer named Jony Ive, and they were very close, but Steve was kind of a maniac.

I remember having a conversation with him and was asking why he was a little harsh, and he said, "No, you just want people to like you. I thought you held the work up as the most important." And I was terribly cross because I knew he was right.

I think great leaders, they build up people by saying the hard thing. Bad leaders, they're so obsessed with their image and what people think about them, that they don't realize why vanity is so dangerous. It looks like kindness and it's not. The second thing I've realized is soft feedback is the cruel option, actually. So every time you soften the truth, I want you to think that you buy yourself a few seconds of comfort, but you cost someone else weeks or months of improvement. Like, who are you to make that decision? Don't you wanna be the type of leader who people leave their time with them and say, "God, I learned so much. That person made me better," as opposed to like, "Yeah, that was a pretty good boss," kind of liked him. He was fine. So I was reading about Bill Gates the other day, and he famously loved conflict. He believed in doing these really aggressive one-on-ones with people that would make other employees cringe, and it was how he communicated. But he believed that it was never good enough in anything you could almost do. You could always do more. And so he actually used to push employees so hard in their one-on-ones that they would leave feeling like they got a workout. They famously said he even used to drive around the parking lot and check and see if employees were in on the weekend by memorizing their license plates and then following up and having a one-on-one with them on Monday about why they weren't there. Now, I'm not saying that works in every job or company, but it tells you what the crazy ones do. There's this chick, Kim Scott, and she leads teams at Google and Apple. She actually wrote this book called Radical Candor. Really big book. She calls this ruinous empathy. It's when you care so much about avoiding an uncomfortable conversation that you never say what needs to be said. You know what's crazy, though, is most people actually do this. Like, imagine for a second someone makes the same mistake 3 meetings in a row with you. It's not the first time. You never told them. They walk into a performance review later thinking they're doing great, only to find out you've been mad at them for months. You've been unhappy for months. You haven't thought they were performing for months. So every conversation you avoid is like you stealing from their future. It gets more expensive for them and for you. The most respectful thing you can do for a competent adult is treat them like one. They can handle the truth or you guys shouldn't be working together. What isn't helpful is them finding out you knew and said nothing. Steve Jobs was effective because he was tough. Plenty of tough bosses build terrible companies, but he was effective because everyone knew the work came first. That's what you're copying. You're not throwing a temper tantrum. You're not being mean to people to be mean to people. You're holding the standard or what we call holding the line. And if you're not going to be a standard bearer, you shouldn't be in charge. So here's the framework that I use. So C is for care. You start with why you're giving the feedback. I might say something like, I want to give you feedback because I think you're capable of more. And the reason you do that is you're not softening the message. You're explaining why you're about to tell them something hard. I might even say something like, I'm telling you this because I think you're capable of more. Do you want to hear feedback about an area where I think you need some improvement? I also really like that because it's allowing them to give you the option to give tough feedback. L is for lead with the work. I don't ever attack the person. I don't say, you're bad at presentations. Who's that helping? I say, hmm, this presentation was not good. Here's why. Here's how I define good. Help fix the work instead of labeling the person as incompetent unless you don't want them to make any change whatsoever. You guys should know this by dating people too. E is for being exact. Do not be vague. Don't say, "Do better." That's so useless. Nobody can act on it properly. I would say instead, "The report is due Tuesday. You gave it to me Thursday. Do you see why that's an issue? You didn't keep your word with me." A is ask. After the feedback, stop talking, shut up, and hand them the mic. Ask, What am I missing? What don't I understand? And then listen. I like to a lot of times say, what am I totally wrong on? This is showing that you're just as open to feedback, but you have to actually listen when you do this part. Like half the time you learn context that might change the picture. The other half, they talk their own way to the fix and then they own it. And finally, R is reset. End on what happens next. So don't leave people wondering. Tell them exactly what success looks like. So next time, Send me the draft on Tuesday or flag something you're stuck on or if you're going to be late so we can work through it. So CARE, lead, exact, ask, reset. That's how to be clear. If you run that, you're going to watch what happens and be shocked. I've learned that great communication will change your relationship forever, will change your partnership forever, will make you more money, and will make you better in business. I've learned that great employees want clarity. Great friends and partners want clarity. Weak ones want comfort, and I don't want you to confuse the two. Now, in the beginning of this, they will probably be a little miffed at the feedback. I think feedback is really hard in the beginning, but as you give more and more of it and you explain the clear process for it, people understand it and they want it because they feel like you are clear and You care. And so if you remember the 2 C's, you'll get really far. Another little note is that feedback gets really hard when it isn't in person. Usually you're dealing with a whole team, right? Or you're dealing with a bunch of people. Try to be in person when you do this. Often, I think in the beginning, you want to try to give tough feedback in private until you've created a culture where everybody's so used to feedback that giving it in public isn't that big of a deal. There's this guy, Ben Horowitz. He's one of the co-founders of Andreessen Horowitz, huge software company. But he also started tech companies previously. And he explicitly says that the standard management advice of like how you're supposed to give feedback, which is called the sandwich, which is praise, criticism, praise, trains employees to distrust praise and dread criticism. His rule is like, no baby, give it to me straight with specifics. Don't wrap it in compliments. He likes to do it in private, but he fired his best friend as the CEO of Loudcloud and said in his book, I had to say the words, I'm firing you, to the person who was the last man at my wedding. And if you can't do that, don't be a CEO. What a hardass. Jensen Huang of NVIDIA famously doesn't do one-on-ones with any of his employees, thinks that giving private feedback is a disservice to the entire team, mandates all difficult conversations in person. And maybe that's why he's one of the richest men in the world in the fastest period. Now, I already told you about Jensen Huang publicly critiquing his execs, but like, let me break down exactly what this looked like. He runs NVIDIA. He has 60 direct reports. Six-zero. Most CEOs have 8 to 10. His reasoning is this idea of no one-on-ones. Everything gets said in group meetings. If he has feedback for a VP, he gives it in the room with all other VPs present. Why? If you think about this, he really thinks he's doing them a solid. He says feedback is a learning opportunity. Why would I hoard it in a one-on-one when 40 other people could learn from watching? Now it sounds brutal, but NVIDIA's employees stay 5x longer than industry average. Turnover is 2%. He calls it torturing them into greatness. At Contourian Thinking, my company, I do the same thing. I do a leadership meeting, which is now about 12, 10 or 12 leaders all around our boardroom. And I also do a content leaders meeting. Any feedback I have to give goes to those two groups as opposed to one-on-ones. I do not do one-on-ones. This is really important. And if you think it's just dudes, talk about Kim Scott getting fired by Sheryl Sandberg for being too nice. So Kim Scott gave a presentation to Google leadership. It went well. After, Sandberg walked around and said, "You said 'on the lawn' there." Scott brushed it off. Sandberg pushed. I know an amazing speech coach. Google will pay for it. Scott brushed it off again. Samberg stopped walking and looked at her and said, you are one of the smartest people I know, but um makes you sound stupid and I'm not going to let you sound stupid. So Scott wrote Radical Candor about that moment. Her frame, caring personally means challenging directly. And I think using words like stupid are really triggering for people. And in a way, that's exactly what you want. I call it the idiot index, which I think I stole from Elon Musk. And so with my admin team, I'll say, did you run this idea past the idiot index? And that is such a triggering thing for people. They're like, did she call me an idiot? Does that mean I'm an idiot? But what I'm saying is only an idiot would do this. So like, did we run it past an index? Not you, but when you're looking at a bunch of options in front of you, did you go, imagine my dumbest friend is right here. Is my really dumb friend going to make this decision that I always get annoyed at my dumb friend for making? And this is really helpful because if you don't do this, you're failing your people. Now, the next part, we talk about this like the room you're afraid to call. So often managers become human complaint boxes. You don't want to be stuck accidentally becoming a therapist, do you? I know that I do not. That is not my happy place at all. I think there's a pattern here. 2 people have a problem with talking to each other. Instead of talking it out, one person brings it to you, the leader, right? You see this in social circles too, like, Pam did this, then the other one, right? Nobody's talking to each other, but everybody's talking about each other. And the 2 people who actually have the problem, they're not talking at all. This happened to me in my business recently. It's super annoying. It's one of my biggest complaints in business. And I finally had to sit them in a room together and say, you're both adults, talk to each other or stop complaining to me. But you don't get to do both. If you guys talk to each other and you can't work it out and you are doing it direct, then you can bring it to me. But if you are not even having a conversation, I don't want to hear about it because all you're teaching me is that you're not good enough or strong enough or have enough confidence in order to fix this. And you just want to gossip and have drama. And I have no space for gossip in my life. I know this is a little intense, And maybe you're like, how am I going to do that if I'm not in charge? Here's what I would do instead. I like to say what Dave Ramsey's rule is, and he taught me from being at his headquarters. He says, at my company, we have a no-gossip rule. We just don't allow it. And so if anybody's gossiping or talking about anybody and they find out at Dave Ramsey, you get fired. So I like to say something like, if I'm not the main, main head dog leader and I can't be as tough as Codie Sanchez Sanchez is, I might say something like, you know what? I have a rule this year for me. I don't gossip. I don't talk about other people when they're not in the room. It's my 2026 rule. And so I actually can't participate in this conversation. It's just like one of the things I gave up this year. Now, if we want to go talk to the person in person and like work it out between the three of us and have a constructive conversation, I got you. I will support you. I'll be there. But I actually have a rule. I just don't gossip right now. I don't like how I feel afterwards, so I just stopped doing it. I think most workplace drama exists because people are having the wrong conversation with the wrong person and not willing to say it to their face. The rule is go direct to the source. If you have a problem with somebody, who's the first person you should talk to?

Them.

Not me and not the group chat. Also, I think sometimes people are just looking for somebody to hold a line. So like, if you do that and you stop being everybody's emotional middleman, the team is going to start handling its own friction instead of laundering it through you. I actually saw this the other week. My president in a leadership meeting just brought it up. He said, I had to deal with a bunch of annoying drama this week. You know, I didn't appreciate having to deal with this issue because one of the leaders had a little flameout. And he's like, and I didn't appreciate the fact that like I had to mediate two of your direct reports. This should really be your issue. And he's like, anybody have anything they want to say about that? So it's just out in the open as opposed to this thing that's in the DMs that's behind the scenes. And in fact, even today I was like, Listen, I can feel from both of your teams there's a lot of frustrations. I really wish you two could feel like you're on the same team. Both sides are frustrated with each other, and instead of being a team heads down, figuring it out, you guys are going back and forth and back channeling. It's honestly kind of exhausting. Why can't you both just say, okay, can you do this better? What can I do better? Okay, I'll do that. And then have a conversation to ask if you two are nailing it. I'm like, you're all very competent and Lord, we'd get more done if you worked this way. He kind of gave me some feedback. What are we not doing that can be improved? Who's saying what? And I said, no, no, we're not playing the he said, she said game. I want to make sure you guys are really working together. Can you do that in the team? Everybody should be vibing on what we need to solve. This is not rocket science. People have done way harder things than this. And, you know, eventually he's like, fair enough. Okay, we'll work on this. I hear you. I'll do my part. I said, great. I will always hear your frustrations as long as you guys are actually airing them out to each other. Because the truth is, you will actually have a team that is so much higher functioning if you push them to have crucial conversations to the point of I literally have handed people before the book Radical Candor or Crucial Conversations. Don't feel like leadership is about being liked. It's about making your people better. I think in the future, you should aspire to be the type of leader where other people say, "Yeah, they're really tough, but man, am I better because of it. It's not just that I like that person. I like who I am because of them. Because of the way that I have learned watching them, I am more valuable today." Don't you want to be respected, not just liked? I know I do. Soft feedback feels kind, but honest feedback will actually build your employees up. Every manager has to choose between comfort or growth. So remember CLEAR, and this week have that conversation. Do the difficult convo. Talk to the person that feels off. Maybe get rid of the person on your team that will not do the thing you know they need to do. And if this is you in your personal life, Do the exact same thing. Half of the stuff that works in business works even better in your personal life. There's just no guardrails to how you should have gossipy hard conversations in your personal life too. And if you want us to help you become a better leader, if you want us to help you have these kind of conversations and figure out where you are choosing comfort over growth, maybe you should join The Boardroom where we help owners do this every single week. Can you tell me if this episode was useful and what is the thing that is holding you back from growth?

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