Greg Voisen
Welcome back to Inside personal growth. Another episode Amy, you do a podcast so you realize that every time we come on here, we are just blessed beyond belief. To have guests like you. And joining me from Los Angeles is Amy Sandler. She is a trainer, a lead coach, a podcast host for radical candor, and a mindfulness and breathwork worker as well. And this is the book we're going to be speaking about today. Good morning to you.

Amy Sandler
Good morning. I am excited to be with you and talk about radical candor. And wherever else we go.

Greg Voisen
am as well and I'm gonna let the people know also that Amy used to train she has done a lot of training. She has a lot of background in meditation, mindfulness, breath work, and she worked in Did you work inside Google teaching the Search Inside Yourself? Or were those yeah all over the place?

Amy Sandler
I was one of the first 30 People certified accepted to teach the Search Inside Yourself program, which was developed at Google outside of Google. So they had been training it internally and then in 2014, so it's it's been over 10 years. Where they open it up to start sharing Mindfulness Based emotional intelligence outside outside of Google. Well,

Greg Voisen
that is a wonderful course. And for all my listeners, just type in Search Inside Yourself. A little bit more. She's a professional speaker, corporate mindfulness trainer, executive coach, as we said, currently serving as lead coach and podcast host of radical candor. Go check that out. We will put links in the blog to that as well. She, as I said previously served in roles including Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Content Officer. And I love your statement here. She believes that genuine curiosity and boy do I have a big dose of that and active listening are the gateways to transformation and to be a podcast host and guest I think you have to be curious. You know, you're constantly finding new authors and having them on your show and I mean, Curiosity is like big for me. So we're gonna dive right into this because I want you to do more of the talking than me. But first off, start by telling our listeners a little bit about your background. I did tell them a little bit but such little bit because I know you've done deep work in the meditation and mindfulness arena. And I think that's what makes you so well. suited to actually do the radical candor work. And you know, everybody says, Well, how do all these things kind of fit together? It's like me, I have a degree in spiritual psychology and they go, Well, how do you coach business people with that? And I'm like, because everybody's got spirit and hopefully they bring it to work. Right? And we all have to find that. So how did your journey lead you to become one of the top trainers for radical candor? Well,

Amy Sandler
it always looks easier to explain it from the rearview mirror, I guess or looking looking back. And I really do think that curiosity propelled so much of it I've always been curious and a seeker and my background was really in the workplace was in marketing and communications i i went to Harvard undergrad, and then I went to get my MBA in Harvard. And I think a spoiler alert part of my seeking was like, oh, you know, going to Harvard does not make you feel great about yourself. You need to figure out other ways to kind of fill yourself up from from the inside. after business school, my classmates were going into something called the internet. I don't know if you heard about that. You know, jobs like Yahoo, like fifth employee, but I said, you know, I'm gonna go get another date sheet that dates you. Yeah, it does date me a little bit. And I got my MFA in Screenwriting. So I've kind of been on this income minimizing path. For a while then I became a meditation teacher. I never thought, first of all, that I was going to be a meditation teacher or be that that was actually something that the workplace would really welcome you know, for for decades. There. Were really two streams of my life. There was kind of the work in the job. And then there was the personal growth and the curiosity and the seeking. And so you mentioned that Search Inside Yourself program. That was really where I realized that this was something that companies were starting to see the value in. And there was a way where I could bring kind of all of these parts of myself into work. And as you said, it wasn't just something I was able to do. It was in fact, you know, like a competitive advantage that I had been, you know, spending decades doing this kind of deep dive into, into personal development, leadership, development, spirituality, etc. So for the past 10 years, I started teaching mindfulness and emotional intelligence to CEOs I've worked in that you're familiar with both YPO Young Presidents Organization and Vistage. And so really trying to at the time, there was a lot of need to explain the value of mindfulness. You know, this was 10 years ago, eight years ago, there wasn't as much of an awareness. Now I think one of the really exciting things is that people really do see the value of mindfulness they do see the value of stillness of listening, and how these things can actually deepen emotional intelligence which to go back to your sort of primary point, I would not be teaching radical candor had I not done all of this work. When we think about feedback, I'm very sensitive. In fact, I think it was like my first grade teacher, I had a little note that said, you know, Amy is very sensitive to criticism, she cries, you know, if somebody you know, criticizes her, etc, so I'm very sensitive. Yeah, well, my recovering perfectionist, right. So you know, I teach this stuff because I believe in it and because it holds me accountable to practicing to practicing it. Same reason why I feel that way about mindfulness, about attention training, about listening, and certainly about radical candor, which for me, is really bringing mindfulness and compassion practices in action, in relationship in conversation with the people that we work with, you

Greg Voisen
know, is interesting. I was recently listening to Tim Ferriss with Martha Beck, and I didn't know a lot about Martha Beck story, but she really told her whole story. And I was like, Whoa, talk about radical candor. And that's kind of what she's teaching now. Right to the world is really kind of radical candor. I don't know for anybody out there, I'm not advocating you go listen. To Tim Ferriss podcast, but I will say that interview with Martha Beck was really something. Now you host this podcast show radical candor. How did you get involved in that role? Because, you know, I think okay, a mindfulness meditation teacher might not be wanting to do a podcast show, but you say it's very rewarding and you love doing it. Explain how you got there, because Kim Scott must have said, hey, you know, Amy, you want to do this and you're like, Yeah, I got my hand up for this one. Yeah,

Amy Sandler
yeah. Great. Well, first also say a big fan of Martha Beck. I haven't listened to that conversation, but I will check it out. Radical candor is it means a few different things. So Kim Scott, like you mentioned, she and I went to business school together. We actually didn't know each other in business school. We reconnected years later. And so she gave this talk. before the book came out for the book, radical candor came out that Kim had had worked at Google. She had worked at Apple. And this is really a book dedicated to how can I succeed without being a jerk? This idea that we can care about the people we work with, at the same time, we're willing to challenge them directly. So it being Silicon Valley, she does this talk, it goes viral. And so all of a sudden, there's all this money to kind of create this company. So it's both a book and it's a training company. So what we do at radical candor, is we actually do workshops and and keynotes and that sort of thing. And Kim knew that I had been doing a lot of workshops, and so I started doing workshops. We were such a small company. So I was chief marketing officer and then I was Chief Content Officer looking at our our content in terms of the podcast itself. There had actually been a podcast when the company first started before I before I joined, and a few a few years ago, actually it was before the pandemic, Brandi Neal, who's our director of marketing and content now, she and I were talking about bringing back the podcast and so we started talking to two different firms that might be able to help us and then all of a sudden, the the we sort of got a little stuck COVID pandemic lockdown, and, you know, with all of the pain and all of the challenge of that time, you know, like anything with constraint and challenge sometimes you find opportunity. And so we were like, Let's just restart the podcast. And so it's really time right? Yeah. And so we're sitting in front of our computers and so and so really, you know what it what it is, is I will really host the podcast with with Kim the author of radical candor and co founder of the company and Jason rose off, who's our CEO and co founder. And by the way, I always wanted to be a talk show host just going back to curiosity and listening like to me it's the it seems like the obvious thing like you said, what, what could be better than talking to people and asking them questions and hearing their stories. It's really

Greg Voisen
interesting because I'm reflecting on the word radical. And just last week, Ken Wilber was on here for his new book, radical wholeness. It's a Shambala Press book. And you know, it's interesting when you look at this word radical because it stirs up emotion within people. Right, first off, because you're thinking about, well, you know, when I first grew up, we looked at radical a different way and so, you know, you say radical candor introduces the idea of caring personally while challenging directly. Okay. And I hope that that's the way everybody sees it. How can leaders strike the right balance between these two concepts? And what are some of the common common pitfalls that any leader should try and avoid if they can? Such

Amy Sandler
a great question, you know, with any camera people talk a lot about ways in which the book title plan the way it was intended? I'd say the biggest mistake that people make when they hear the phrase radical candor is that they think that means what we would call obnoxious aggression, or brutal honesty by that that means you can just say an air quotes in the spirit of radical candor, and then that gives you carte blanche to just act like you know, a garden variety jerk and just say whatever it is, and you know that shirts terrible I hate this podcast, you know, like that is not the spirit of radical candor. That is the spirit of what we would call obnoxious aggression or brutal honesty. In fact, there was a I think it was on HBO, a show called Silicon Valley, where they did a bit of a spoof and satire of radical candor and they were not doing radical candor, they were doing brutal honesty. What we say it's

Greg Voisen
interesting when you say that because the Martha Beck interview, it was really more brutal honesty in the sense that she says, most people are going through their lives. telling themselves a lie. Now that I don't disagree with we we frequently do live with those lies because we don't want to tell the other person we're afraid to tell they're the person we don't know how to tell the person. Would you say that that is also common inside the walls of these big companies? I would say it is right. And they just don't know how to express it. But your book helps people learn how to express it in a caring way.

Amy Sandler
Exactly. And one of the things that we like to do is we like to tell stories we like to tell stories, times when we received radical candor, and times when we made mistakes when we were not acting in a way that was both caring and challenging. One way that can help people think about what radical candor is, is compassionate candor. The compassion is the care personally part. And the candor is the challenge directly. Another way to think about challenge directly to by the way is to be a more is my feedback kind and clear. I think about radical candor about applying it in a conversation. Does the person I'm talking to feel like I care about them. And are they also really clear on what we've discussed, like that is my goal. So going back to this idea of, you know, that sort of kind is clear, clear is kind of you know, and Brene Brown talks about this a lot. You know, these are really fundamental ideas of truth and love, like when you really fully abstract them out. It's this idea of, of truth and love. But I think that the important point, Greg is that it's going to land differently for different people. There is not one absolute measure of what radical candor looks like. And so it's really about if you and I are in conversation together, how can I share my perspective in a way that is to be helpful for you that it's being kind in service of your growth? At the same time, it's clear what I'm asking for you. And so one of the reasons why we share stories about what it looks like is it gives me a chance to say hey, this is what care personally looks like for me. This is how this person kind of invested in the relationship like deposits in the relationship bank, so it'd be helpful for me to share a story about when I when I receive radical candor, like what that what that looks like for me or do you want me to pause? Pause here.

Greg Voisen
Where did you like I think it's, I think it would be good for you to share it and I'm gonna preface that with if I remember speaking with Corey Cogan from Franklin Covey, and you know, even though the quadrants which I don't think all the people listening understand the four quadrant Yes, I think to put a context to this. We're looking for the far right hand corner almost like Stephen Covey right, getting things done, you know, within but actually he borrowed that from Eisenhower and they even said that Covey made it so everyone could use it. Eisenhower didn't. But the reality was, is you guys have created a little graph. And I think if you talk about that graph for a second, then tell your story showing people will have a better context, but it's where we're headed. Yeah. 100%

Amy Sandler
Yeah, well, we joke that you know, if you worked in consulting or went to business school, you realize that all of the world's problems can be solved by putting them into like a two by two matrix like what you're talking about. So there's sort of this vertical, you know, y axis there's an X axis. If you imagine like the vertical axis is care personally Right? So there's that, that compassion, part of radical candor, and then the horizontal axis is challenged directly. So what you were saying that kind of top right, is radical candor and being caring and challenging. One of the things that I think is really helpful about the model and about using these kinds of frameworks, is to think about the mistakes that happen when we're not practicing radical candor. Right. So one mistake that we might make that we just did was we're high on challenge. The person knows they're messing up. We're being really clear, but we are not caring about them as a human being. Maybe we're sharing this criticism publicly, right, kind of front stabbing, we would call this obnoxious aggression. Now, I just want to say with this matrix, this framework, the what we call, you know, sort of the two by two framework or the quadrants. This is not a personality test, like we don't want people to start, you know, putting people into boxes like oh my box is a is a real this in my part, this. These are mistakes that we all make in conversation. And so I think the value of this framework is I kind of talked through it is to think about, oh gosh, in any conversation. I feel like I'm really high on the challenge here. Do I need to move up on care personally, so it really can be something to help you guide your conversation. So kind of that bottom right? High challenge, low care, we would call that obnoxious aggression. And again, these are behaviors, not personalities. After you acted like a jerk, rather than moving up on care personally, sometimes the human tendency I know I have it is to move on over to the left, where you end up not caring, not challenging. We call that manipulative insincerity. Now, how does this show up at work? This is the meeting after the meeting. Oh, Greg, great idea. Definitely. Want to do it. And then after this conversation, we ended up talking about all the reasons why it's a terrible idea, right? You say one thing to the person's face. And another thing about them behind their back. This is sort of, by the way, makes for really good television drama, sort of all the office politics. And gossip, etc. But this is really the most toxic of workplaces and, and you know, it can be fun to tell stories when you've acted like a jerk you know, when I sent that really obnoxious email and I wrote to the project owner how they weren't listening to me and they're wasting you know, millions of dollars and I then I included the CEO and had had an you know, that was really obnoxiously aggressive to do that publicly. It's for me when I think about my values. It's it's really hard to look at these times when I'm acting in manipulative insincerity when I'm really thinking about myself much more than the other person and it can, you know, to give ourselves a little like compassion or grace to kind of think about why do we act this way? Maybe we're stressed, maybe we're burnt out. Maybe we feel like we've said this over and over and the person isn't listening. But I'm curious. I kind of want to pause on this one. You know what comes up for you, Greg, when you think about this, this this behavior, where we're not caring, we're not challenging again, in that framework. It's kind of the to buy to the bottom left. What's your own perspective of why we might land in that manipulative insincerity quadrant? Talking about people not to them?

Greg Voisen
I think thanks for the question. It's just like a podcast host to ask another podcast host a question. I hear. So here's what I would say. I'm going to come at this from a Buddhist perspective and I want you to underline the word perspective. I think much of what happens to is a result of the perspective in which we carry around with us. So what I would say is there's frequently pain pain can result from this kind of action. The question is, do I have to carry the suffering with it? And that's a choice that I make as a result. Now, if I'm old enough to accept and understand and I have the I take personal responsibility for whatever it is, I'm 100% responsible. You know, I'm approaching this from a Buddhist perspective right now, but the reality is, it's like hey, really, if you look at that, and applied it to that, right, far right quadrant that you were talking about manipulative? I might not look at it as manipulative, I may re change my perspective, right. So I know that might not be what you were looking for. But what I would say is, you know, that's the way I would try and frame it for people. Don't take anything personally, we'll go back to Don Miguel Ruiz, right. I mean, the Four Agreements, right. So I don't I don't know if that works for you, but the reality is, that is a very important element is like, Oh, I gotta try not to take it personally. Yeah,

Amy Sandler
and that's that's a really interesting phrase, which I'll come back to in just a moment. I so much of of radical candor, the reason there is no absolute measure of radical candor, you know, so often people just tell me what to say, and tell me what will work well, we can't give you a script because you know what I'm going to say to Greg in this moment. I don't know how it will land. And so one of the biggest pieces of radical candor is that it's measured not at the speaker's mouth, but if the listeners ear, so I might client kind and clear, I might think I'm being radically candid with you, but how is it landing for you? Maybe you thought I was acting like a jerk. Maybe the challenge wasn't clear. I don't know. And so that's why these are one on one conversations. We want them to happen real time. So that's kind of thing one thing to what you said about perspective is so important because we are sharing our perspective with each other one of the biggest pieces of guidance when we talk about giving feedback, and I'll also want to make sure I talk about asking for feedback because that's actually where we start in our practice of developing these relationships is when we are sharing, giving feedback. It's sharing our perspective. And so number one is to share this in a way we would say that that's humble, and not humble in the sense to share it humbly that Oh, I am subservient. To you, but rather that curiosity. I am I am looking at this from this perspective. How are you looking at it? That's what we mean by sharing it. Humbly. So we are very aligned on this idea of sharing perspective and I think the piece that I'll get into now and make sure that we talk about the taking things personally because it's another really interesting, interesting part of this. When we go back to that quadrant that you kind of want me to walk people through right so we have top right, high challenge. I like being being clear being being caring is radical candor, the bottom right obnoxious aggression, high challenge, low care, we just talked about the bottom left, low care, low challenge, manipulative insincerity. Now when you say about the world, elective not landing for you, right, so I want to get to that Kim, you know, intentionally chose phrases and did did a lot of work to sort of bring up things that would would be as clear as possible. Now. The reason why and those words if those words don't work for you, you change in fact, Kim was working with a group in Japan and culturally, the idea of radical candor that those words and challenging care didn't work. So what they landed on was polite persistence, right? So the polite was the sort of culturally you know, sort of care personally and the persistence was the challenge directly. So use these words, you know, we all bring a lot of sort of meaning to them, but the reason why on manipulative insincerity versus the top left, which is ruinous empathy, that's high care, low challenge now, we would all agree, empathy is foundational to your practice. of radical candor. But empathy without action can both lead the person themselves to burnout and stress and also have really damaging effects on the other person. And so we share stories. One of the things that we'll often do is share about you know, when we've been in these sort of mistake quadrants, and for me, my tendency towards ruinous empathy is why I teach radical candor because if I really do care about this person, and I almost lost Well, I did really lose a good friend who had worked for me because I was so afraid to tell them what they needed to hear and months passed and months pass and months. Passed. And finally, we got this new boss and this person's job, job was on the line. And I never told them because I was not wanting to hurt their feelings, not wanting to hurt their feelings, and then all of a sudden, realizing that their job had been on the line. I was able to save the job but not the friendship because this person was like you never told me for six months. And so it's really those painful stories where you realize, gosh, it was ruinous because I was so worried about hurting their feelings. And yeah,

Greg Voisen
no, you said you were going to tell a story

Amy Sandler
well, I've shared a couple stories out there. One more was that the story? Well, that the story one share was what radical candor looks like but we also share our stories of the mistakes that we make. And the reason why that is so important is because we want to really normalize for people. We make these mistakes all the time. And we want to show people and especially as leaders, when you start to look at the mistakes you make when you share your stories when you're vulnerable. have either a time when you received radical candor, you know, what was it that made that radical candor for you that can show the people you work? With what sort of caring and challenging looks like for you very helpful, also very helpful to share stories when you have made these mistakes, and just kind of double click on that story that I was sharing, when I you know, really lost an important relationship to me because I was so worried about this person's feelings. And then it was so much worse, right? But if I'm really honest with myself, Greg, what's really interesting about kind of that left side of the framework, ruinous empathy, manipulate, living, we could talk about the word manipulative, but there was a part of me if I'm honest, probably a big part of me. That didn't tell him because I was more worried about myself. I didn't want to deal with his emotional response nine times out of 10 he was jump up and go do everything one time out of 10. He got very angry and yelled a lot. And I wanted to avoid that conflict. I also people pleasing part of me, I wanted everyone to like me, I didn't want to be sort of the bad guy and be the one giving the feedback. So that's what we mean by that manipulative insincerity that I'm more focused on myself, rather than being helpful to that other person. And both of those were happening in that story. And that's why emotional intelligence, self awareness, emotional management, really being willing to look at yourself in the mirror to realize what's what's going on for me here. Why am I not sharing this with this person?

Greg Voisen
Well, so look, when you come into an organization, you have to introduce this concept. People do the course they read the book, they get a foundation for the work, they understand the foundation. And I always wonder because you know, you and I are working remotely right now, which most people do. It's very common. How can leaders practice radical candor, effectively in a virtual environment, where really the body language and the tone are kind of harder to convey. I mean, if I was sitting in a room with you, right now, even doing this interview, it would be completely different because we'd see each other's body language. Certain things. I've seen podcasts where they do them live raid, meaning live, I'm in the same room with you. Yeah. How can people practice this in remote work and do it effectively? It's

Amy Sandler
such a great question. I will say radical candor as a company and we've been growing for me five, you know, nine, etc. Posts. We've got coaches. We we've always been we've always been remote. The guidance that Kim initially wrote in the book was before COVID, before this sort of remote revolution. And so one of the pieces of the guidance was to have these conversations in person. So we adapted we actually adapted doing our workshops from you know, in person to remote and then we shifted our guidance to wanting to do this more like job one would be in a video call so we could have the body language and see what was happening. Now there's actually some interesting research coming up that in some ways, there's almost more noise than signal coming through in video and maybe it's actually better to have a phone call and be able to you know, walk, et cetera. And so I'd say the most important thing is that different mediums are going to work better for different people, whether it's in person versus phone, versus video, the most important thing our recommendation is time that we are able to have a back and forth conversation in other words, like, Please don't break up with people by text. You know, like, we want to be able to have these conversations in real time. I was gonna say text or email

Greg Voisen
should be at the bottom of the list. 100%

Amy Sandler
Yeah, and we don't this is a real this is a real time conversation, not an email. Not a text. No, I'm someone that likes to put my thoughts together in writing, and then deliver it in real time. And so that can be very helpful. I can certainly share with you the model that we like to prepare our feedback and how we like to do this. But just to share one bit more bit about the remote. I do think we need to be a bit more intentional about the relationship building part of it. So whether that's a few minutes, you know, at the top of a meeting, checking in on how someone is doing, whether, you know, we really want to have these conversations in a one on one setting. And the most in building these, what I would call radically candid relationships, Greg, is to actually start by asking for feedback. So we want to do this in a one on one setting. And let's say so, let's say Greg, you and I start working on a project together. We're going to be, you know, working on a new podcast together. I would want to set up whether it's a weekly meeting, bi weekly meeting, where we kind of have this standing meeting where we can check in and see what's working, what's going well, what we could improve on. And I would want to really make sure that in that meeting, I solicited feedback from you and say like, Hey, Greg, like what's your working style like, you know, how can we address issues as they come up? Maybe I would ask, what was a partnership or a boss you had that you really appreciated so I can know kind of what radical candor looks like for you. So I would want to start by asking for feedback from you. Whether it's about communication style, whether it's about how it can be a better partner with you, etc.

Greg Voisen
The other thing I would say and I know you know this, but you know, I, having come from a background in psychology, and I've taught this to so many people. reframe the question saying this is what I heard you say, and then say what you heard them say and let them respond because the reality is, clarity of communication is probably the most important thing where there's no misunderstanding. So the little statement, you know, if I'm right, this is what I heard you say, right, Amy, and you go, Yeah, that's exactly what I heard you say? It helps me so much, to stay on track, stay focused and make certain that everybody is clear with the communication. We do say that that's a good bit of advice.

Amy Sandler
I think the biggest mistake in communication is thinking that it happens. Right? So I love that. Yeah, absolutely. saying, you know, framing what I heard you know, we do a listening exercise in our in our workshops, kind of a mindful listening exercise where we actually don't repeat back. It's sort of at the far end of the listening exercise. And one of the benefits of those exercises is that you get to really notice your patterns in communication, the kind of listening that you're talking about more generous listening or active listening, where you repeat back. I love that because A, it forces you to really be present and hear what that person is saying. Right? So that's important for you. It helps the other person feel feel heard. I think we all you know, that have this fundamental need to be understood. It also allows you as the speaker to clarify your own thinking. It's like, oh, yeah, I did say that. Let me tweak that a little bit. What I was really trying to say here was this, you know, does that help clarify it for you? Right, because any of these conversations, radical candor, communication, it's a two way street. If I'm going to share a challenge with you, then I need to expect a challenge back so yes, I love that. You know, this is what I heard you say. And the other reason why I think that's so important. Going back to even phrases like how the the phrase manipulative insincerity lands for you is because these words we all bring to these words, our own lived experiences and certain words are going to have all of these different meanings for us.

Greg Voisen
Well, I remember in in the course that I took one of the terms that was used with loving kindness. Yeah. And it was used, you know, quite frequently actually. So what you were doing, either a trio or a dyad with somebody and working with them and counseling. Loving kindness was like the umbrella fell over this whole thing. And I think that's partially what you're speaking you don't use the word loving. I get that. I don't know if that would be 100% accepted. In corporate one on one. But I think more and more. Now. You basically there are ways that leaders have to build trust with teams. Okay. And most people today, whether they're building software, they're working in innovation or design. They've got to do it while implementing radical candor, especially if they haven't been practicing any kind of direct feedback before. Where would you or how would you help the people out there in teams today, to learn how to practice direct feedback before so that it can be more effective, especially as a team because I think teams frequently this is what I've noticed. It can be one main communication coming from the supervisor, whoever, and they've got a team on Zoom, or in person, and it's like, Hey, this is what we're doing, guys. But there's so little inclusion, there's so little feedback, right? And I want you to comment on that because obviously doing the work that you've done, you know how important it is to have inclusion? Absolutely.

Amy Sandler
I mean, you're talking about a lot of different ideas here. You know, trust inclusion. I think one of the biggest challenges is where we might have a lot of feedback debt, you know, we might have technical debt, financial debt, often organizations might have feedback, debt and an even bigger idea of, you know, how do you build trust? How do you build psychological safety? Kim Scott and Amy Edmondson who really coined the term psychological safety, she's a professor at Harvard. Business School, talks a lot about how practicing candor goes hand in hand with safety and I think if you want to start building a radically candid culture, i You've got to I think really start small kind of start where you are. So first of all, you know that we may not be able to change the culture of a whole organization or company ways like to start where I am. So whether I'm the CEO, whether I'm, you know, kind of middle manager, whether I'm in an individual contributor, just what's the first thing that I can start to do, how can we almost create like pockets of excellence, you know, around where we are. So for me, I would, you know, start with a few different people that I could start soliciting their feedback in a one on one conversation over the next few weeks. And if I'm a leader, I would share that feedback publicly whether they wanted it to be attributed or not, but just say, you know, I've heard that I'm talking a lot in meetings, and inclusion is a really important value. And so going forward in our meetings, I'm going to assign someone to kind of keep an eye on, you know, timing and space so that you know, people really have a voice. So that's kind of thing one is I would start by soliciting feedback. share publicly and start putting that into place. We talk about sort of our order of operations. So start by asking for feedback, and then have specific insincere public praise with the people I'm working with not just what they did, but the impact they had. So the model that we like to use for both praise and criticism, we adapted from the SBI model from the Center for Creative Leadership. We call it core context, observation result and expected next step. So a piece of public praise can be like, Hey, Greg, when you asked me that question about, you know, how people can start to implement it. So you know, in the podcast when you asked me that question, you know, the observation, what the context was the interest of the podcast, and the observation was the question that you just asked, so I'm looking for work product or behavior. What's the result? Like what is the most meaningful impact of that? There could be a variety of different ways I want to think about it, but for me, the most important result is that it gives me a chance to provide your listeners with meaningful tips they can put into practice right away, like that's the number one tip other different ones. So Right. So on the podcast, you know, when you asked me the question about what people can do, it gave me the chance to give them some more practical tips and then expected next step. So this could be just keep doing it like praise, it can be just keep it up, you know, sort of that that ongoing challenge. It also could be like, you know, share with other podcast hosts, you know, how do you prepare for podcasts so that you can most be effective, right? So we want to share the wealth and when we start focusing on praise, focus on the good stuff, and the why and the impact, not just great job. That's not helpful praise, what's helpful praise is what was it that made it good so that people can start to replicate it?

Greg Voisen
Well, your answer to the question was excellent. And I think if, if all of the podcast listeners get this far in the podcast, this podcast was worth what Amy just said, because my feeling is not only one I heard core, and then I heard also behind what you were saying, this needs to become part of your DNA. This needs to become who you are as a leader. Not like oh, well I'm being told I have to do this because this is what I've got to do. No, this is what you should want to do. Because this is going to make things so much smoother and communication more open. You're going to get honest feedback. That feedback loop is so important. And I want to ask this question. You know, many workplaces they struggle with kind of this passive aggressive behavior or toxic communication, right? How can leaders use radical candor to transform a culture where open communication has really been lacking? And I know, I tell people when I go into a business as an advisor, you know, I could tell them that I could cut the air with a knife, because it felt like that. In other words, it was so heavy, everything was heavy, everybody felt suppressed. I can remember a time when I was 17 and I went over the Berlin wall into a communist area. And it was almost like that same experience, because you felt like everybody was repast. Everybody was doing what they were supposed to be told. But nobody was happy doing what they were doing, right. So I know that's a weird analogy. But when I was young, and I went into into Russia, or I should say, I should say, East Berlin, not Russia. The reality was, I felt so just small. Little

Amy Sandler
Well, I find that a really powerful story, and it shows that, you know, a lot of what we're talking about is kind of invisible, right in the sense of, you know, these one on one conversations and these cultures when we're thinking about, you know, one of my favorite lines that Kim shared in radical candor was this idea that relationships don't scale, but culture does. And this idea that we build culture through these more radically candid relationships. So I would build on what I shared as my initial guidance, which is as leaders starting with ourselves, Am I you know, it's one of my favorite things about working at radical candor is that it's the first time I've actually worked in a place where we are putting these ideas into practice, and thank goodness because we're teaching it but so often will work in organizations and will have certain values and mission statements etc. And yet, there's not that alignment of what we are doing. So if you are a leader, you know, first of all, what are you hearing from your overall listening? Not one on one listening but one to many listening in terms of data like your engagement surveys, your turnover numbers are people, right, you know, sort of quiet, quitting and all of these things. And so, when you think about building this culture, again, starting small modeling it the other thing is when I was talking about sharing your stories, it can be very helpful for leaders to start to look at, here's what radical candor means to me. Here's why I'm implementing it. And when you get criticism to treat it like gold when leaders start sharing criticism that they have received, that is when we are modeling that it is okay to share and that safety. That's not to say that one interesting leaders.

Greg Voisen
I'm sorry, I say that is open communication. Yeah. And the

Amy Sandler
last thing I'll share what leaders can do is that the one time we don't want to encourage listening is when people come to you and you know, Adams complaining to me about Ben and Ben is complaining to me about Adam, that is when we want the two of them talking to each other. That's where we can start to cut down on the side conversations. If you get together, then we would want you to be with your managers have us all together. And Kim talks a lot about in the book, speak truth to power meetings where you can have kind of skip level meetings. In fact, we just recently did those where we were having meetings. Jason was leading meetings talking about Kim Kim was leading meetings talking about Jason. So if we had not felt safe to give the feedback to them individually because of their power in the organization. This is a place to do that. And so acknowledging that it is hard to speak truth to power and creating systems and processes in the organization where people can safely speak up and try to lay that power down.

Greg Voisen
Well, Amy, it's been an honor having you on the show and for all my listeners, the book is radical candor, go out and get a copy, we'll put a link. We'll also put a link to the website radical candor.com You can learn more about this book, you can learn more about their trainings. You can actually see me on the podcast, there's plenty of episodes up there for you to take a listen to. So that you can get a better idea. Now I'm wrapping this up. I always like to have a final question here. We see or what we perceive, and I think much of the world perceives is this ever evolving workplace it's a very it's happening very rapidly. It's things seem to be happening faster. And again, I'll say perception, but I would say too much respect everybody. That's their reality. How would in this hybrid work world in the work world where we're working today? Can radical candor stay relevant? In other words, what is it that you would tell people and what are three takeaways that they could use?

Amy Sandler
Yeah, I mean, in fact, we're, we're kind of busier than ever. I think to your point people are stressed people there's so much in for farmers so much that people have to respond to and have to adapt, and we and we have adapted the content as needed. But that's why we're not so prescriptive. So number one, these are about building more trusting one on one relationships. How do you do that? Start by asking for feedback. I really liked your tip about listening when you asked for the feedback, not just repeat back what you heard, but put it into practice, reward the candor fix what you can fix and if you can't fix it, explain why you have a different perspective on it. But make sure that you follow up so ask for feedback, reward the candor and and share your stories. I mean, the part that AI is not replacing is our human experience our lived experience our stories, and when we share what radical candor looks like for us times when we've received at times when we mess up. And when we hear what other people what that looks like. We're we're gonna build new definitions of what these words mean, based on each of our own experience. So sharing stories,

Greg Voisen
they will great wisdom and I think tonight, we're gonna get a dose of radical candor. For all of you are listening. There's going to be a presidential debate,

Amy Sandler
hopefully compassionate candor. That's that'll be my vote.

Greg Voisen
I'm not certain it's going to all be compassionate. But the reality is, it's going to be interesting and I think millions of my listeners will have either tuned in by now, because they're listening to this Patek podcast later than the actual event itself, but commentary was, we'll get to see your work and progress on the debate stage. So thank you, so much for being on inside personal growth again, and for sharing your wisdom and insights from the years of experience as somebody who taught mindfulness meditation, Search Inside Yourself and comes with just such a great background to be able to speak about this. Namaste to you thank you for your your wonderful interview here today. And I look forward to some in the future.

Amy Sandler
Thanks, Greg. It was wonderful to connect. Thank you for your presence and lovely questions. A lot of fun.