Lead Better - When Candor Is Kind

0:00Good afternoon, Scott Baker, Eric Springer. Good to see you both. Great to be back with you guys. All right, here we go. It is Monday, September 14th, live 3PM Eastern time. We're talking about the field note from admired leadership on today's edition of Lead Better. The title is when candor is kind. And I'm going to kind of set this one up this way because what's interesting is that candor is kind is the title of the field note. The other day in the Wall Street Journal, I had read an article where there was a quote from the woman who is the head of the Microsoft Xbox unit where she said clarity is kindness. And both of them talk about slightly different things, but there's a common truth, which I think is where we might be able to go both in the content of the field note, but it might kind of broad now particularly to kind of Eric Springer sort of insights out. I just got this feeling.

1:01So what the field note is talking about particularly is about candor being kind and how we're working and giving feedback to people and not pulling punches, but also not being cruel and trying to make people better by saying, look, this is where things are so for for Asha Sharma taking over Xbox, not having a video game background herself, but she's got a lot of tech experience. She has is saying things sometimes are not going well in a business. And so the more you talk about the numbers about the bad news, the better and faster you're going to get to a solution about where you need to go and what needs to happen. So clarity is kindness. And I think that's kind of refreshing. So whether you're kind of saying inside a company, look, we got to say we got to call you know a spade a spade. Here's what's going on, right? And you sometimes have to have these conversations with people and yet we're often too sometimes too hesitant. Now one my initial questions with that set up is I have a feeling because Eric has got a lot of corporate experience here at admired

2:06leadership, military background. I'm guessing in the military that the candor part is not always the problem, right? I just have to maybe I'm wrong. You would think that people are just a little more like giving orders and being very direct about where people are failing. But am I right about that or wrong? You know, I think there's there is an aspect there that I would share and I it's a quick story. I let a unit that was in Nevada and there's a huge aerial warfare exercise that happens every year called operational. It's like a jet fly and from all over the world and in the operation center, there's these huge plasma screens that are covering everything that's happening. And as we're looking at the map there, you see blue dots flying in which is guys and then you see red dots which are the bad guys. And every now and then you'll see one of the blue dots turn white which means that he's a ghost. But sometimes in the melee of the of the dog fight and all the things that are going on, that person that has been shot down so to speak doesn't get the message,

3:09doesn't calculate the answer. Right, right, right. For another five to 10 minutes, they're still flying and fighting and doing all the things until 10 minutes later, they found they get a hold of them. And they had a term for these folks that were, you know, dead but didn't know it. And they called them raging ghosts. Raging ghosts. Wow. He's raging. He's still raging. And and when I look at a lot of organizations and we go on, there's a lot of raging ghosts. There were people that got shot down two years ago. We've never had the ability to tell them or really make that clear to them. Right. These things that you're trying to achieve, they're not going to happen here. Right. So so to point, I just, you know, point and it's a great article that that you reference there is, hey, the best thing for you to do is for you to return to be clear. Generate it. So let me be clear with you. Mm-hmm. Where you are in all of this. Yeah, right. You don't have any raging ghosts out there. So even in the military, there's raging ghosts. There's there's there's people that nobody really wanted a problem. Hey, you're not going to be the next,

4:11you're not, you're not even lying for that next promotion or position. Promotion. Yeah. Now, I wonder on the other end, Mikey, because you've, you had a lot of background and nonprofit work and other things where maybe there was a lot of of coddling. Would that be the, is that the opposite of candor? Yeah, probably that's a good pace against it. Yeah, it's, it's not kind at all, right? Even as Eric is describing how people are not telling others, like, especially on high performing teams, or oftentimes you don't get the kind of feedback that you want because you're doing great. And I'm a high performer and so therefore my boss actually doesn't want to meddle very much. So I lack, I would lack the kind of feedback that I would hope if you're, you're part of a high performing team. And then to go on and be like, immediately be like, oh, there's a difficult piece of feedback here. And I definitely don't want to like, I'm craving the feedback anyway. And then you're going to go on and, and, and hoard it, right? We've talked another time around

5:15how saving it for the one on one is a sense of hoarding that is not kind at all that you're actually missing a week's worth of opportunity to lead that you're just storing up for your one on one at the end of the week. That's, that's a horrible way to do it. So that feedback needs to come often and early. Yeah, so the case that your cadence of it is important. Yeah, the cadence is important. And Eric, I guess the question both on raging ghosts and the, and this isn't an exact analogy, but it's a faster one. But when you were talking about that person who didn't other dead yet, just come having watched some games yesterday. It's like the guy running down the sideline who doesn't realize he stepped out of bounds and he's still going like crazy, right? And they're like, wait, no, it's, it's, it's not, you didn't get a touch down, right? So, yeah, so the field note, Eric is saying that you're defer, that you're deferring this cost of ambiguity to a later time, meaning if I'm giving you this Ui, GUI kind of feedback and you don't know,

6:18like we're delaying the hard call, the no, and the other person has kind of taken this and they get a little uncertainty. There's a little bit of false hope. And then there's just a lot of wasted time. But here's my question. In our content, in our playback, in our subscription playbook, for our clients on at myarilluship.com, one of our coaches gives a, and a, a story that I've referenced before on lead better, which is she'd been coaching a leader who had to give very difficult feedback to a trader on a financial team that she wasn't going to be getting promoted to the next level to make partner. And so our coach was working with this person, the person was like, I just don't know how to tell her, right? Well, they walked through that, they drilled it, and then our coach happened to see the woman who was going to be getting this feedback later in the day. And she says, how's it going? Right? And she goes, oh, good. And she goes, yeah, and I know it's time for like kind of those evaluations. And she goes, oh, we had that, we already had that

7:18today. And our coach was like, how did that go? And she goes, I am right on track. I've got a couple of things to work on, but I'm right on track. So clearly, even after the coaching from one of our coaches, this person just couldn't bring themselves to say, you're never making partner here. So I'm sure you've had people that you've coached who are like, I'm not sure how to be, I want to be a good human being, but it's what, what is that hurdle that causes us to just not be able to give bad news face to face to somebody, or even in a way that might prevent it from being bad news because it's going to take a radical change to turn it around. Yeah, there's probably a lot of things. I mean, there's a desire to be liked and homophobic, but really the risk there, and I think this is really the heart of what we're talking about is that the fog of this indirectness just creates confusion. It actively enables people to continue on a trajectory that's that's not going anywhere, and the kindest thing to do it actually to be clear to have a person and say, hey,

8:21this is actually, I can see where you want to go, I can see where you are, this is the path, that's not going to happen. I'm going to, I'm to a path that aligns with your goals and your visions and your aspirations for yourself. And what do you people often do is they don't want to, they don't want to have that difficult conversation, right? That puts them in a place of discomfort. To do you like to phrase Mikey Clarity through candor? They're not exactly the same thing. Candor being kind of the honesty part, but does honesty lead us to a better picture of reality? I do. I do like it. And I think that might be one line of the trench that we're drawing of where we should operate. The other line of the trench is a question back to you because too many leaders oftentimes just attach themselves to that one line. And they say, like, truth is everything that I'm after. And then they end up using that as an excuse to claim that they had no choice, but to be insulting, right? Or to be rude, right? And then they are comfortable with the idea that

9:23the field notes says that they live with fractured relationships in the name of honesty. And they allow this, this rail of truth to be the only thing that they get close to. And the rail of harmony is not anything that they ever approach. So we're talking right now of people who are going over the line on harmony, but how do you say going over the line on truth as well as just as valid a question here? And I think I would lean into that as a stopgap question before you're delivering this message as always to ask yourself, who does my candor actually serve here? Because if I feel great after giving this message and the other person is completely inflated, right? And obviously I failed, right? Yeah. It should be disturbed the other person and to help their long-term aspirations and their long-term journey. Yeah, you're saying we had a comment like that in the comments today that said candor oftentimes is just someone trying to get their ego out on the table in a way. And they

10:25end up feeling better about, you know, expressing their own truth. And it's not really about, you know, helping other people get better. And so that relationship with who you have becomes distorted when you're trying to make yourself better instead of having your team be better. You know, there's a book called Radical Candor that we sometimes, I think it's actually one of the ones that's in our, that we reviewed in the past. And I think in the, in the actual, you know, me that the book, it'll talk about this caring and the candor and those things. But I think, you know, something that something that misleads a lot of people is that the radical does a lot of heavy lifting in the title there. And there's people that I find that so I'll just believe in Radical Candor. Yeah. So I'm going to be blunt and direct in those kind of things and they'll use that as an excuse. There's many people who have not read that book, but they read the title and they're using that as their operating principle. Exactly. Yeah. Not good. Yeah. In fact, we've often said that we've ended up working in helping a lot of firms recover from what they thought was the right way to be,

11:32to, to, to have candor. And you'll find that like in our content around feedback, it's very relational. Our content around relationships is very relational. So you're actually the whole point is not just event and wax somebody, you know, with the sledgehammer. But can you, can you do that in a way that actually makes them better? And, and I think that's kind of where the, the end of this is. And I do think that the idea though that if you have honesty, if you have a desire to, to point to a pathway. And I think that's the case for the woman at Xbox. And by the way, let's not feel too bad for her. Right. In, in the thing, it's like, just think about this Xbox. Yeah. The revenue is declining over to Xbox. But they're bringing in $23 billion a year. They have 14,000 people that work in that unit. And right now they only have a 3% profit margin. So, yeah. Just very sad. So, but in all of that, if Minecraft numbers are, are dipping, she's like, doesn't do us any good to say, hey, we're still

12:37doing $23 billion and we got a 3% profit margin. We have to get very honest look at where the direction is. Where's the trend line? Where are young people doing whatever else they're looking at? So, I think that that if you have a leader that's committed to truth, but committed to making things better, then that's the combination, right? Which is, I want you to become better. And if I'm withholding that from you, then I'm not, I'm not being kind. I'm actually serving my, protectively, my own desire just to be liked or whatever else. But you're not getting better. Our, our performance as a unit isn't getting better. And that's not what we should stand for as leaders. Yes. I think, you know, many, many of these cases, if I'm doing it right, I actually get more candor all around me. And, and if I'm doing it wrong, the, the obstacle will happen, right? You know, if I'm being blunt with my candor, then all of a sudden there's less candor. And then are you getting candor, right? Like a lot of leaders probably don't want to hear the candor. Yeah, I mean, this is, we, we talk about other things and how we disagree with others and so on. And,

13:41the reason we want to do that in a positive way is because we actually want more disagreement. Because at some point that disagreement is going to highlight something that we did know is happening and that we weren't aware of and is going to prevent us from making a mistake. That's costly. Yeah. You bring up a really interesting point there because that might actually be a flag for us to understand whether or not our outgoing candor is producing the kind of incoming candor that we have. Because yeah, if we're being too harsh, then people are going to clam up around us, right? Because most people aren't going to be defensive and throw it back in our face and, and start a fight. Right. For leaders who have this status difference with 13 members, they're going to have a tendency to just make people clam up. And so having some of that candorist talk come back to you is probably one of the best indicators that your output is happening in the way that it should happen. And it is going to be like this, this trench. And I don't know that there's necessarily Scott, do you think there's a specific behavior

14:42exactly how to do that? We don't write it in the field note this way. And is that because inside this trench between truth and harmony where candor can exist with kindness, it's more of an art form that you're not going too far one way or the other way. But I would say think of it this way because we often on leave it or don't like totally unpack, you know, admire leader behaviors, which are kind of in our main subscription platform. But there is an idea that we kind of even put it into two box grid of like is is is where I'm taking you just an insult, right? Am I just going to be like, you're terrible and there's nothing you can do about it, right? A lot of feedback feels like that to people. So even if I'm going to give you feedback that says there, there's an issue here. It has to have some constructive element to it. We call that constructive criticism, right? Now there's a way to frame that in terms of a lot of other behaviors, but there it does have to have that actionable part. And I think that's probably at the heart of where something happens between truth and harmony here is him. Are you giving me something that I can actually do to get better

15:47at the thing that you're talking about? Because if not, then why are we even talking? Right. Right. All right. Thanks very much both of you for this time. If you join us by way of the chat, I'm going to say take time to read through this field note and we'd love to have this conversation continue there in the comment section. I'm going to post the link to this particular chat right now. And for those of you joined us by way of social or if you this the first time coming in and you're not exactly sure who we are and what we're talking about, we do these conversations every single day after releasing the morning's admired leadership field notes. We just feel like having a conversation for 15 minutes about this aspect of leadership. New one every single day is a great way for us to be able to grow as leaders and we invite you into the conversation that way. So we invite you here tomorrow, 3 p.m. Easter. Join us. Scott, Eric, good to see you both. Thanks very much. Thanks everybody. We'll see you later.