Caught in the middle of a boss who’s all care but no action and a team lead who’s full steam ahead with no brakes? That’s a workplace tightrope no one wants to walk. Your ability to Care Personally and Challenge Directly can seriously be affected when communication falls apart on both ends of the spectrum, and it’s not just frustrating—it’s debilitating. How do you stay productive and keep your sanity when you’re managing up and down with people who either dodge conflict entirely or bulldoze through it?
Listen to the episode:
Episode at a Glance: Stuck Between RE & OA
Radical Candor Podcast Checklist: Stuck Between RE & OA
- Have a conversation with your boss. Have a conversation with your boss and let them know what’s getting in the way of your success. Start by acknowledging that your boss has positive intent, that their empathy comes from a good place. But be clear that it’s not serving them or you well in this particular situation.You can use “I” statements. “I appreciate how much you care about the team,” “I’ve noticed that sometimes feedback gets softened to the point where the message is lost.” Or “I feel as though I need your direct support in resolving the tension that I feel with my team lead. I believe we could achieve better results if we combine care and more direct communication.” All of these things, sharing your perspective and asking for help, will go a long way to helping you understand whether or not your boss has, the ability to help you resolve this situation.
- Remember, it’s natural to be empathetic and it’s a good thing to be empathetic. But you’re not responsible for your bosses or your team leads’ emotional states. And spoiler alert, you’re not responsible for anyone else’s emotional states, but your own. Although of course we want to be sensitive to them. Your primary responsibility is to do your job effectively. So it’s okay to set boundaries to protect your own wellbeing. If they become aggressive, you can address it calmly in the moment, but firmly and seek additional support.
- If you decide to try to address the problem directly, talk to your boss beforehand. And if that fails, then ask your boss to facilitate a conversation between you and the team lead, what we refer to as a clean escalation conversation, where you can try to find some common ground to seek to understand each other’s perspective. In the spirit of clean escalation, address obnoxious aggression with CORE. So when you’re sharing your perspective in that discussion, make sure to use context, observation, result, and expected next steps, as a way to avoid personalizing the feedback, avoid the blame and shame, and keep your feedback focused on the work and not the individual.
Radical Candor Podcast Resources
- Give Candid Feedback With the CORE Method | Radical Candor
- Feedback from Your Boss | Radical Candor
- Asking for Feedback | Radical Candor
- The Radical Candor Order of Operations | Radical Candor
- Make Work Less Like Jr. High: Radical Candor Podcast 5 | 10
- Managing Challenging Conversations At Work | Radical Candor
- Navigating Workplace Tensions: Stuck Between Ruinous Empathy and Obnoxious Aggression
The TLDR Radical Candor Podcast Transcript
[00:00:00] Jason Rosoff: Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Radical Candor podcast. I’m Jason Rosoff. Before we jump into our regularly scheduled programming, I wanted to tell people who are hearing this for the first time and remind people who have heard us say this before, that we’ve got real, something really exciting to share with you. We now have an ad free version of this podcast available to anyone who joins our Radical Candor community. If you’re interested in joining the community, you can head over to radicalcandor.com/communitypodcast and join right now.
[00:00:34] When you join via that link, you’ll get a seven day free trial to the community, access to Radical Candor courses, you’ll get access to this podcast you’re listening to right now, ad free. And you’ll get episodes early before we publish them out to everybody else. You’ll have the opportunity to join in real time interactive learning experiences, you’ll have the chance to join regular interactions with Radical Candor experts and so much more. If you’ve ever struggled with communication at work, and you probably have if you’re listening to this podcast, this is the community for you and we’d love to see you in there.
[00:01:10] Amy Sandler: Yes, we would and we all struggle with communication at work. That is why we are here Jason, I’m, Amy Sandler. Today we’re answering a listener’s question about how to navigate a work environment where they’re stuck between the proverbial rock and a hard place. Between people embodying opposite parts of the Radical Candor framework. So this person writes, and we’ll give a few definitions after quote, I have a very ruinously empathetic boss and an obnoxiously aggressive team lead.
[00:01:45] I find myself being ruinously empathetic to not make our boss feel worse about myself and also ruinously empathetic to my team lead. So he doesn’t blow up like a volcano and I lose my job. I really need some advice. So just a couple of definitions. First of all, if you’re new to the podcast and you’re not as clear on what ruinous empathy and obnoxious aggression are, Jason, do you want to give the thirty second definition?
[00:02:15] Jason Rosoff: Sure, ruinous empathy is where you care, but you don’t challenge. And obnoxious aggression is where it’s all challenge and no care. And so I think in this case, what this person is describing is that their boss, their direct manager, the person that’s responsible for their job and career, is ruinously empathetic, meaning they’re not challenging the people on their team, including this obnoxiously aggressive team lead.
[00:02:43] And uh, those terms might be confusing also to people, like what’s the difference between boss and team lead Uh, it’s a pretty typical thing in engineering organizations to have your daily work managed by one person, but your career path managed by somebody else. So in this case the boss manages the career path, the team lead manages the day to day work, is what I’m guessing is going on here. Um, but because we don’t know what type of role this person has, we’re guessing. Uh, so I’m painting myself into this picture a little bit based on my previous experience, um, since these teams, the terms are very, um, familiar to me.
[00:03:23] Amy Sandler: Yes. And speaking of painting ourselves into this situation, um, I could really paint myself into this listener’s question, which is basically really trying to, you know, manage other people’s emotions, um, and also to try to manage our own, uh, ability to, uh, not spark either the team leads obnoxious aggression or to not have their boss feel worse about himself. So Jason, I thought it might be interesting if we kind of separated these out and first talked about the, uh, the ruinously empathetic boss, um, how we could model Radical Candor in that situation? Want to start there?
[00:04:07] Jason Rosoff: Sure. I just want to say that I have like a very strong opinion about this particular situation from my perspective, this person, you could argue they have an obligation to try to like work it out with their team lead. And I think that’s the right radically candid thing to do. But ultimately it’s not their job to resolve this. It is the managers, their boss’s job to resolve this, uh, situation. So the, I just want to be really clear that everything I’m about to say is like from my perspective, there is one person who has the maximum amount of responsibility and that is this person’s boss.
[00:04:44] Amy Sandler: That is so helpful. So actually if we can go further into that direction, if the responsibility starts with the boss, what would you say, let’s say I’m the boss and you’re the listener writing in. Like, what would you say to me to start this conversation to raise this to your boss?
[00:05:04] Jason Rosoff: Yeah, and we’ll come back to, I just want to be clear, we’ll come back to this question of like what might you say to the team lead who’s being sort of obnoxiously aggressive.
[00:05:12] Amy Sandler: Right.
[00:05:13] Jason Rosoff: Yeah, okay. Great. So what, the way that I would approach this with my boss is to go to them and say, hey, you know, I know that you care about me and my success in this organization. We have a good relationship, and I need to share with you something that I feel like is really getting in the way of me being successful here. And that is, the relationship that I have with, with this team lead. And I need your help in improving the quality of that relationship to make sure that I can actually continue to be successful in my role.
[00:05:43] Amy Sandler: That is so helpful. I am wondering, like, if the way that I read the note, it wasn’t a hundred percent clear to me that the issue was just about dealing with the team lead. It was also about, um, in general, with this ruinously empathetic boss. So are you saying, because I suspect there’s some other ways that this problem sort of rears its head. But it can obviously be very helpful to give a specific situation to your boss of like, how can you set me up for success in this situation?
[00:06:16] Jason Rosoff: I think what I’m saying is, I think the boss needs to be given some feedback about where they’re failing to meet the, their obligation to this person, to help them grow and develop in their role. And from my perspective, like how they respond to that, it’s really important to give them an opportunity to respond to that direct feedback because the way I read the note is like there’s ruinous empathy in both directions. Like they’ve been ruinously empathetic toward their boss, their boss is ruinously empathetic toward other people and toward them. And I think the first step is to sort of break that cycle without being cruel
[00:06:54] Amy Sandler: Yup.
[00:06:54] Jason Rosoff: Or mean to your boss, is to say, I know you care about me. I know you want me to be successful here. And there’s a thing that’s stopping me from being successful. I’m bringing it to you so that we can chart a course forward together. Because like I don’t think you can actually respond to, I need your help, with ruinous empathy. I think the only response that’s like not on the side of challenge directly is manipulative insincerity to a request for help
[00:07:16] Amy Sandler: Can we pause on that? That is very interesting. Say that again.
[00:07:22] Jason Rosoff: Yeah, like if someone asks you for help.
[00:07:24] Amy Sandler: Yeah.
[00:07:24] Jason Rosoff: It’s basically impossible to respond with ruinous empathy Because I don’t think you can truly care about that other person and do nothing.
[00:07:37] Amy Sandler: It’s almost like definitionally impossible. Like, you are basically saying, Amy, do you care about me? So, it’s either, yes, I care, although I don’t, which would be manipulative insincerity, or no. I don’t. No, I will not help you.
[00:07:53] Jason Rosoff: Right. And so I think one way to think about this is like right now, the way that they’re perceiving their boss is that they’re stuck in ruinous empathy. But really what might be happening is that the boss, their boss is stuck on the wrong side of challenge directly. Not just in ruinous empathy, but sort of like in ruinous empathy and manipulative insincerity.
[00:08:12] Amy Sandler: Yeah.
[00:08:12] Jason Rosoff: And they’re having a very hard time challenging. And as a person who, when I first became a manager, I would put myself in this bucket. I had a very hard time challenging other people directly. I was very young when I was promoted to a management role. I was very concerned about my reputation and how other people perceived me. It took me a really long time to develop the sort of, like, stamina to put myself out there to take the risk and challenge. And it was like, I was in a similar position where someone, I think I’ve told this story before on the podcast.
[00:08:44] So I apologize. But someone basically came to me and said, there’s a bully on our team who is not, you know, who’s making it impossible for me to do my work. And from my perspective, like you’re enabling this person. But by not addressing this issue, you’re enabling them. So, and I now, I not only blame them for their behavior, but I blame you for not doing anything about it. And that was like a pretty big wake up call for me. And it motivated me.
[00:09:09] Amy Sandler: First of all, I really appreciate you sharing that story because what was coming up for me, I was putting myself in the shoes of the ruinously empathetic boss, which I have been in those shoes. So it wasn’t a far drive to get into those shoes. And the writer of the, listener writes in, I find myself being ruinously empathetic to not make our boss feel worse about himself. And you mentioned in your story you had someone, and was this person by the way, did they report to you or was it similar to this where it was like a team?
[00:09:39] Jason Rosoff: This was another person who reported to me.
[00:09:40] Amy Sandler: The person did report to you. Okay, so what’s coming up for me is in younger early manager days of my kind of fear of conflict and especially dealing with obnoxious aggression, and I’ll name like also there’s was like a gender dynamic and you know, some of these other things going on. And so I just, I feel compassion for this boss, who is in the position of they have the actual hierarchical power and the obligation to stand up for it. And yet they might not personally feel kind of resourced to have that conversation and stand up to the bully. So I just, I think it’s an interesting place and I just want to get your, like, how did you resource yourself to actually have that conversation?
[00:10:29] Jason Rosoff: I mean, I talked to my manager and I got some advice about how to deal with it. Um, it’s important to me, like, I think the, it’s a noble instinct to want to, uh, to be as generous as possible to your boss. And at the same time, I don’t think it is helping them. Because what I want to say is, if you’re not properly resourced to deal with conflict, you’re not actually well suited to be a manager.
[00:10:55] Amy Sandler: Yeah.
[00:10:55] Jason Rosoff: Because being a manager is necessary, like, you will necessarily absolutely, without a doubt, find yourself in the middle of conflict because if you put more than two human beings in a room, someone is going to wind up fighting with somebody else. Even with just two people in the room, it’s really hard to go on forever without ever getting into a disagreement.
[00:11:17] But the moment you add that third person, it’s, I feel like it’s essentially a guarantee. I still have compassion for this person, so I’m not blaming them because many people are sort of pushed into management without being properly resourced, without having training or support or any of those other things that we’d want people to have as they took that step. So I can still have a lot of compassion for this person. But the thing I want to say to the writer, to the person who wrote this note is like, it’s not your job to make sure your manager is properly resourced to do their job.
[00:11:46] Amy Sandler: So go, so yeah, so if we build on that, like if the listener goes into their boss and says what you would recommended, and saying like, hey, I, in order for me to be successful, and can you say exactly what were you going to say? I need you to do X with the team leader. How did you, what was the request of the boss?
[00:12:03] Jason Rosoff: I would say something like I am really struggling in my relationship with my team lead and it’s starting to affect my ability to do my job. And I want to tell you about what’s going on there to get your help in resolving it. That, that’s the approach that I would take.
[00:12:18] Amy Sandler: And then let’s now, what are we expecting that the boss, they’re sort of couple of options. Like, let’s do the best possible outcome of what the radically candid boss would say and do.
[00:12:30] Jason Rosoff: I think even if the boss, let’s put our, write ourselves back into the story a little bit in the early days. Like we’re under prepared we, don’t know exactly how to handle a situation like this.
[00:12:42] Amy Sandler: Yeah.
[00:12:42] Jason Rosoff: Um, in that case, I think the best case scenario is that the boss, like, listens intently, expresses real interest in what’s going on, tries to get a deep understanding from this person’s perspective, uh, of what their experience is. And then the boss has a couple of things that they need to do. One thing that they need to do is they need to decide, based on what the person writing in shares, like do they think a conversation directly between the person who’s writing in and this person, this other person.
[00:13:12] Amy Sandler: The team lead.
[00:13:13] Jason Rosoff: The team lead, yes. Sorry. Thank you.
[00:13:15] Amy Sandler: Yeah.
[00:13:15] Jason Rosoff: Um, do they think a direct conversation, what would be helpful? Do you think that that’s step number one? Because what I will say is like, once you have this conversation, it’s going to be very hard for the team lead to like get you fired. Uh, so you’re protecting, you’re doing something to protect yourself by having the conversation with your boss before you, uh, approach your very volatile team lead. Um, even if your boss were to recommend that you have a conversation directly, I think you could ask for an assurance from your boss to like, hey, you know there’s a, seems to me there’s a high probability that this doesn’t go well, um, I just want to make sure,
[00:13:49] Amy Sandler: You’ve got my back. Like, yeah, you got my back, hundred percent.
[00:13:52] Jason Rosoff: Yep. Um, but let’s say they determine, no, I don’t actually think that that would be helpful. And they and if they’re honest with themselves and they say I don’t know how to resolve this. Like I don’t have, I, me, the boss.
[00:14:09] Amy Sandler: Yeah.
[00:14:09] Jason Rosoff: Like I don’t know exactly how to help you resolve this. I think that’s like a reasonable response as long as they say, and here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to follow up with our HR department. I’m going to follow up with my boss and I’m going to get some guidance on how best, how best to help sort of like de escalate this situation?
[00:14:25] Amy Sandler: Can I, Jason, just to be clear like what’s coming up and I want to make sure I’m not going down a different path than where you were. I’m imagining there might be a few different places of where the team lead is coming from. Like maybe there’s some obnoxious aggression and how the team lead is behaving, but this person is not sort of inherently bullying people. They’re being a bit more, uh, you know, more challenge than care versus if this team lead, there is actually some real bullying behavior happening, like.
[00:14:57] Jason Rosoff: Yeah, some intent to harm kind of thing.
[00:14:58] Amy Sandler: Correct, yeah.
[00:14:59] Jason Rosoff: Like, or dominate other people like that.
[00:15:01] Amy Sandler: Yeah.
[00:15:02] Jason Rosoff: I think that’s an important distinction. I’m assuming the same thing. Because my guess is like, it could very easily, like putting myself in another situation. Uh, I had an engineering manager who worked me, uh, with me, who is like one of the nicest people in the world. And everybody on his team thought he was so mean, um, and was like very obnoxious. And it was really about the way that he was communicating what he was communicating. Um, uh, like there was definitely an expectation of that directness was a like a signal of respect and all this other stuff in his head.
[00:15:41] And in his team’s head it was sort of like, this person’s a jerk and never recognizes the good things that I do. It only tells me when I’m screwing up. It was challenging to repair the relationships, but it wasn’t actually challenging to like address the behavior, the actual behavior. It took time for people to believe that the behavior was going to change. So if I, we try to be compassionate for the obnoxiously aggressive team lead like they may be unaware of how their behavior is impacting other people.
[00:16:08] Um, because most of the time when people become team leads, they just behave like the last team lead that they had. They don’t necessarily like, just like this manager may not know what they’re doing. And probably the person who wrote in occasionally feels like they don’t know what they’re doing in their job.
[00:16:23] Amy Sandler: Yeah.
[00:16:23] Jason Rosoff: Like there’s a high probability that the problem is that the person, doesn’t know how to do it better and is unaware of how their behavior is affecting others.
[00:16:33] Amy Sandler: I think that’s a really important point. So we’ve gone to the boss, we’ve said, you know, sort of the, help me help you, help me succeed in my role. And so boss is gonna either say, hey go directly to the team lead. If for some reason the boss isn’t sure that’s the best path, uh, the boss might still need to think about it and say, hey, but I’m going to follow up with you, you know as to a next step. So the boss has heard the concerns and they’re either saying go directly or they’re saying I’m going to follow up with you with the next step, is that what I heard?
[00:17:02] Jason Rosoff: Correct. And I think the next step is going to be something, in that case, would be something like clean, what like, what we describe as clean escalation, where the boss and this, and the person who wrote in and the team lead would get together. And they would have a conversation to talk about, uh, whatever the details of the issue. And again, I think the thing you’re really looking for is to make sure that you’re focused on specific behavior and specific details as opposed to like a generalized, you know, dislike or annoyance with the team lead. Um, that’s what I’d be looking for from my boss in that case, is like help me resolve some specific situation or issue that has come up recently, is a pretty, is what I would consider to be like a good first step.
[00:17:55] Amy Sandler: If we want to give some guidance for that conversation just to bring in, for folks who haven’t heard, uh, what we call our CORE method of giving feedback, both praise and criticism. So context, observation, results, and then expected next steps. And so like what you’re saying, very important to focus either on the behavior or the specific, you know, work products.
[00:18:18] So for example, the context is, you know, in the last meeting, when you raise your voice and stand up and called this other person’s work stupid, like that’s the context. Team members stopped contributing ideas, some have stopped or are actually not going to the next meeting. That’s the observation. Our sprint velocity has dropped by thirty percent in the last month because people are afraid to discuss blockers. Those are the results.
[00:18:44] And so one of the things we talked about, Jason, on a recent podcast that you and I did, where we talked about using the CORE method, that it’s actually really important to check for alignment on the context, observation, and results. Because maybe it’s crystal clear in your head, but it might not be as clear to the other person. So before we get into next steps, checking for alignment. And so I’m curious, do you have anything more to add? If I was to go directly to the team leader, if it was in that clean escalation conversation, where might we need to, um, go a little deeper before we get to next steps?
[00:19:19] Jason Rosoff: I would be interested to know whether or not the person observed the impact, like they observed the effect that their behavior had on the, on our listener, on the person who wrote in. Right, because you’d want to talk about their experience. You wouldn’t want to talk about a third party who wasn’t in the room.
[00:19:37] Amy Sandler: Yeah.
[00:19:37] Jason Rosoff: So it would be like, this person having the opportunity, the person who wrote it and having the opportunity to say, you know, in that meeting, when you raised your voice, like, I really felt shut down. And like, I shouldn’t contribute, like, you didn’t want me to contribute anything additional to the discussion. If I’m the boss, my question is, Nick, I’ll throw you under the bus. Nick, you’re the team lead now. Uh, Nick’s our audio engineer for those who are new to the podcast. Uh, I would say, Nick, did you know, did you notice that?
[00:20:08] Like, did you observe, uh, did you observe Amy’s reaction, response? Like when you raised your voice? And what’s interesting about that is like, I could imagine Nick saying, I didn’t raise my voice. Like I don’t, because like sometimes people like, this is, these are behaviors that people are not conscious of so they like they get animated in a discussion and they don’t feel like they’re yelling but other people like clearly perceive them as being angry. Um, I’ve told those stories before about how Ben and I, uh, my one of, one of my closest work colleagues for many many years at Khan Academy. Like we would get into disagreements and other people would feel like we were fighting and we would feel like we were, you know, we were having a spirited discussion.
[00:20:55] Amy Sandler: Well speaking of spirited discussion, can we just actually role play this for a minute? Nick, if you’re able to come out from under the bus and just, for example, that you actually didn’t, you didn’t think you were raising your voice. Would you like to play a little while we’re at it, and just pretend that Jason is the boss and you’re the team lead? And you thought you were just fine.
[00:21:16] Nick Carissimi: I mean, this has happened to me in my personal life a million times. So yeah, like let’s give it a shot.
[00:21:25] Jason Rosoff: All right. Uh, so we’re setting the scene. This is a clean escalation conversation. I have invited you, Nick, and Amy to this discussion. Uh, you know, Amy, you came and you shared some concerns that you have about the way that you’re working with Nick, and I would like to help you to, one, become more aware of like how this relationship is going, and two, to just better understand one another’s perspective. So I was wondering, Amy, if you would just start by sharing your experience, um, uh, of, uh, a recent experience that you had with Nick that helps illustrate what you are finding challenging about your relationship.
[00:22:06] Amy Sandler: Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Jason. I, Nick, we had that meeting last week and I proposed the idea of having our podcast meet on Wednesday rather than Monday. And you yelled at me and you said that was the stupidest idea you’d ever heard. You said, we always meet on Mondays. It has to be on Mondays, Wednesdays is a terrible day. And it just, as a result, like I got really shut down and I didn’t want to say anything more. And I didn’t talk the rest of the meeting.
[00:22:40] Nick Carissimi: I feel like yelling is a stretch. You know, I like to project and I want to make sure that when I speak, people can hear me. And if it did come off as aggressive, it’s something that, you know, I think that we’re just going to have to kind of work on, I want to make sure that everyone understands that when I speak, I want to be heard. And I want you to understand what I’m saying and I feel that’s a perfect way to handle it.
[00:23:07] Jason Rosoff: Yeah. Nick, I’m kind of curious, did you notice Amy didn’t share anything else after that happened in the meeting? Did, did you notice that?
[00:23:19] Nick Carissimi: I did. And I chalked that up to just effective communication. I let her know what I was thinking and feeling, and she understood and problem solved.
[00:23:29] Jason Rosoff: And, and Amy, I know, I know that that’s not how you felt, like that’s not what happened. Like, from your perspective, like, what did it feel, what were you feeling as you were sitting there quietly?
[00:23:43] Amy Sandler: I was feeling belittled and like, I don’t know how much longer I’m going to want to do this podcast if somebody keeps yelling at me like that.
[00:23:53] Jason Rosoff: So Nick, hearing you, hearing Amy say that I’m kind of curious, like what’s your reaction?
[00:24:00] Nick Carissimi: I certainly appreciate her contributions to the show. And I want to make sure that she feels like she’s an important part of the show. Uh, but it’s just important to me to maintain that control and to make sure that everybody knows that I’m the one that’s going to make these decisions. And if there’s an issue with that, it’s going to be tough for me to deal with.
[00:24:26] Jason Rosoff: Yeah. I wonder if we could try something. Um, Nick, have you ever had the experience of feeling sort of like shut down in a conversation? Has someone ever said something to you that actually made you feel sort of like what Amy was describing?
[00:24:45] Nick Carissimi: I think so at times.
[00:24:48] Jason Rosoff: Yeah. And what did you, what did you want the, what did you wish that the person who made you feel that way, what did you wish that they did in that situation?
[00:24:59] Nick Carissimi: I wanted them to listen to what I was trying to convey.
[00:25:04] Jason Rosoff: Yeah.
[00:25:04] Nick Carissimi: You know, it’s about getting that message across. And sometimes if I’m misheard, uh, it really bothers me. And so I think a lot of my communication techniques come from that place. I don’t want to be misunderstood because I have before. And so when I’m trying to talk to Amy, that’s, to me, the way to express it.
[00:25:24] Jason Rosoff: Yeah. So here,
[00:25:26] Amy Sandler: Jason, can I just say like I really appreciate Nick saying that. Like I totally get, I mean, I think we probably, Nick, have more in common than you think. Like I also don’t want to be misheard. And I think sometimes when that’s happened to us we end up, kind of over, you know, doing it, because it’s coming from a, you know, our own experience. So thank you for sharing that.
[00:25:48] Nick Carissimi: I appreciate you saying that.
[00:25:50] Jason Rosoff: So here’s what I here’s what I would like to suggest. One, um, I would like to share an observation that I have about each of you. One thing I know about Amy is that she’s a great listener and you don’t have to say things loudly for Amy to hear them because she’s listening very closely to what you’re, to what you’re saying. And Nick, you’re a great communicator, and so I don’t think, like in other environments, you may have had to rely on like, you know, being really animated and projecting these things in order to sort of break through. But in this environment, I don’t think you need to rely as heavily on that.
[00:26:24] I think if you gave, uh, Amy the opportunity to demonstrate to you that she was really hearing you, uh, without, uh, having to, uh, sort of like raise , your voice or get, uh, get super animated. I think you’d be pleasantly surprised, uh, at how well she’s actually hearing you. Is that something you’d be willing to try?
[00:26:47] Nick Carissimi: It absolutely is. And I just want to make sure that it’s something that Amy agrees with. Is what he just described is that something that you like, is that?
[00:26:57] Amy Sandler: Yeah, I think I want to, I would like, look, you’re the team lead and this is an important project and I want to succeed. I want us to both succeed. So yeah, I would love to try it. I’d love to figure out a way we can check in. And, you know, what’s important to me is that we can see how it’s going so that, you know, I feel respected and you feel heard. And I think it’s a great start. So what would one good next step be, Jason?
[00:27:23] Jason Rosoff: Well, I, you all know the project schedule, what, where might be an opportunity for us to experiment with this a little bit and then get back together and talk about the results?
[00:27:33] Amy Sandler: Yeah, we’ve got a meeting next Tuesday. So, uh, we could check in after that and see how that meeting goes. What do you think Nick?
[00:27:42] Nick Carissimi: I think that sounds great.
[00:27:44] Jason Rosoff: And scene. Thank you Nick.
[00:27:48] Amy Sandler: Thank you Nick.
[00:27:49] Nick Carissimi: That felt so productive and helpful. And I really wanted to, I wanted to push it further because I feel like Kim’s very good at pushing this further, but it actually, it worked like, I think that we just really handled a very real fake problem that Amy and I have.
[00:28:09] Amy Sandler: Yeah
[00:28:10] Nick Carissimi: And it’s exciting.
[00:28:11] Amy Sandler: It’s very real. It’s very fake.
[00:28:13] Nick Carissimi: It’s very real and very fake.
[00:28:15] Amy Sandler: Yeah, um, no, I, Jason it was really interesting because I, and this is, you know, I was writing myself in the scene a little bit. But like when Nick shared where that perspective was coming from, like when you had asked, you know, if he’d been in that situation, which I thought was really skillful, it felt important for me to validate that. And so I kind of jumped in and I was curious for you as the person leading the meeting. Yeah.
[00:28:40] Jason Rosoff: Like, yeah, I think that’s right. I look, I’ve had many of these conversations. They don’t all go that smoothly, um.
[00:28:47] Amy Sandler: Very real, very fake.
[00:28:49] Jason Rosoff: Very real, very fake. I think what I found is that the conversations are revealing about how people actually feel about each other even more than they are about the thing that’s actually going on. And so most of the time when the things are, when the, when these conversations go well, it’s because there’s all, the people have some affection for each other. They care about one another.
[00:29:09] The vast majority of people like don’t want to hurt somebody else or make them feel belittled or unappreciated. And people don’t want other people, you know, or vice versa, like people don’t want to make other people feel misunderstood or like they’re not listening to that. You know what I’m saying? Like, I think there’s a, that’s usually the reason why these conversations go well, is like people realize, oh, like I do actually care about this. I don’t want them to feel this way and I’m willing to find a way to work on it.
[00:29:35] I think when the relationships are more strained, meaning like there’s more, there’s deeper conflict. It’s not just about the thing that happened or about the way that I handled it, but like, we’re really butting heads. It can take two or three of these conversations actually like dig underneath what’s going on. Like what is actually happening here? Like where’s the the central issue? And I think when I’ve observed that in a discussion like this, one of the things that I ask is like for each person to solicit some feedback from the other person. So, so like, I like, I’m gonna ask each of you ,uh, you know Amy and Nick to take a moment to solicit feedback, uh, from one another about how your working relationship is going.
[00:30:23] Because usually it means that the issue that was brought in is not the real issue. And so by soliciting some feedback, we actually like maybe dig one layer down. Um, I expect that, you know, the manager in the, in our real fake scenario, writing in may not feel super comfortable having a conversation like this and the conversation may not go super smoothly, uh, as a result of it. You know, if it’s an average experience that I had, even when I’m like thinking back to when I was, I dealt less skillfully with these things. I think the like goodwill that exists on a team and the desire to work well together like carries a lot of weight in the in these discussions. And so it’s still possible that it gets resolved, um, even if it’s not super skillfully handled.
[00:31:11] Amy Sandler: Jason, I’m curious, like, just as we look to wrap up this piece. Like, as I think about the tips, like you said, it’s not up to the listener writing in to do the manager’s job for them. Like this is up to the manager. Um, but I wonder, like, is there a recommendation for the manager if that person isn’t as skilled as you are in having this kind of like clean escalation conversation? Is there a way to have some ground rules in advance of like, to your point, like, we don’t know, you know, how much goodwill there is between these two people. Like, is there a way that you found to kind of set up, like, how we want to engage with each other in this conversation that you found helpful?
[00:31:54] Jason Rosoff: Yes. The thing that I would do if I was doing this for real, and I was worried about that is I would first, like, build a sense of agreement between the people that I was talking to. So I would start by saying something like, hey, Nick and Amy like, you know, uh, Amy came to me because there’s you know some tension that she’s feeling in the relationship and we want to resolve that. But we want to do this blamelessly and I think one thing that can help us, uh, do, do this without getting sort of the blame and shame game is to realize that there’s a lot of things that we agree on. And so I’m gonna like, I’m gonna start the ball rolling and I want to say, I think we all agree that we’d like to be able to work well together.
[00:32:37] Amy Sandler: Yeah.
[00:32:37] Jason Rosoff: And I would look to you and Nick to say like, yeah. We agree. We’d like to be able to work well together. And I would say, Nick, what do you think is another thing that we all agree on?
[00:32:46] Nick Carissimi: We want to be good at our jobs and we want to be effective with what we’re doing.
[00:32:50] Jason Rosoff: Yup. And Amy, do you agree with that? I agree with that.
[00:32:53] Amy Sandler: Yeah. I think, and I think we want to keep growing. Like we want to keep learning.
[00:32:56] Jason Rosoff: Yep. Yeah, so like I would start to build some like,
[00:33:00] Amy Sandler: Yeah.
[00:33:00] Jason Rosoff: A sense of like, hey, we’re actually, there’s, and you said this in the, uh, in the role play, Amy, you’re like, I think we’re more similar than you might imagine. And like, that’s really what I would try to do is say ground the reason why we’re here is because we care about a lot of the same things and we want to find a productive way to have a conversation about that. And I would say, I would make sure to ground in the thing that I said at the beginning of our actual role play, which is, uh, like expanding on the sort of like we’re not here to blame and shame. We’re here to understand one another’s perspective.
[00:33:35] So, or Amy I’m going to have you start by sharing your perspective. Nick, then I’m going to get your perspective. Uh, and then we’re going to talk about it, like how we move forward and I think that reminder, uh, of like hey, we’re like, same team.
[00:33:52] Amy Sandler: Yeah.
[00:33:52] Jason Rosoff: I think can be very helpful
[00:33:55] Amy Sandler: It’s a, I think it’s a really great tip. Shall we go into a couple more tips and wrap up?
[00:34:01] Jason Rosoff: Let’s do it.
[00:34:02] Amy Sandler: All right. So here’s our Radical Candor checklist. These are tips to start putting Radical Candor into practice.
[00:34:09] Jason Rosoff: Tip number one. Have a conversation with your boss. If you’re the person writing in I want to encourage you to have a conversation with your boss and let them know what’s getting in the way of your success. Start by acknowledging that your boss has positive intent, that their empathy comes from a good place. But be clear that it’s not serving them or you well in this particular situation. You can use I statements. I appreciate how much you care about the team. I’ve noticed that sometimes feedback gets softened to the point where the message is lost. Or I feel as though I need your direct support in resolving the tension that I feel with my team lead. I believe we could achieve better results if we combine care and more direct communication.
[00:34:50] I think all of these things, sharing your perspective and asking for help will go a long way to helping you understand whether or not your boss has, uh, the ability to help you resolve this situation.
[00:35:02] Amy Sandler: Tip number two. Remember, while it’s natural to be empathetic and it’s a good thing to be empathetic. But you, speaking to the listener writing in, and for those of us in a similar situation, you’re not responsible for your bosses or your team leads emotional states. And spoiler alert, you’re not responsible for anyone else’s emotional states, but your own. Although of course, uh, we are, we want to be sensitive to them. Your primary responsibility is to do your job effectively. So it’s okay to set boundaries to protect your own wellbeing. For the listener writing in, if their team lead becomes aggressive, you can address it calmly in the moment, but firmly and as Jason outlined, seek additional support.
[00:35:47] Jason Rosoff: And tip number three. If you decide to try to address the problem directly, uh, we would encourage you to talk to your boss beforehand. And if that fails, uh, then we would say ask your boss to facilitate a conversation between you and the team lead. What we refer to as a clean escalation conversation. Where you can try to find some common ground to seek to understand each other’s perspective. Um, and in that spirit of clean escalation, address obnoxious aggression with CORE. So when you’re sharing your perspective in that discussion, make sure to use context, observation, result, and expected next steps as a way to avoid personalizing the feedback, avoid the blame and shame, um, and keep your feedback focused on the work and not the individual, their personality attributes.
[00:36:35] Amy Sandler: For more tips, check out our YouTube channel where you can not only listen to this podcast, but also watch dozens of other Radical Candor videos. Show notes for this episode are at radicalcandor.com/podcast. Praise in public, criticize in private. If you like what you hear, please do follow, rate, and review us wherever you listen to podcasts. It really does help. And some public praise for Nick. Thanks for jumping in and channeling the role play so beautifully. Yeah right, Nick. Thank you. And if you’ve got criticism for us, please do email it podcast@radicalcandor.com. Bye for now.
[00:37:12] Jason Rosoff: Take care, everyone.
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Episodes are written and produced by Brandi Neal with script editing by Amy Sandler. The show features Radical Candor co-founders Kim Scott and Jason Rosoff and is hosted by Amy Sandler. Nick Carissimi is our audio engineer.
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