Russ Laraway Career Conversations

Russ Laraway’s “Gravity Assist” Approach to Career Conversations 7 | 6

Are career conversations a game-changer, or just another corporate mirage? In part two of this two-part episode, Kim, Amy, and Russ Laraway cut through the fluff and expose why most career talks fail before they even start. Managers love to preach growth, but when it comes to actually helping their people build meaningful careers, too many fall flat. Russ brings the fire with his “gravity assist slingshot” method—forget the outdated career ladder, it’s time to propel people toward their real ambitions.

Listen to the episode:

Episode at a Glance: Russ Laraway Career Conversations

Why do leaders dodge these conversations? Why does “career development” feel like an HR buzzword instead of a real priority? And what happens when you actually invest in your team’s future?

No sugarcoating here—if you’re ready to stop playing it safe and start leading with impact, this episode is your wake-up call.

Radical Candor Podcast Resources: Russ Laraway Career Conversations

The TLDR Radical Candor Podcast Transcript: Russ Laraway Career Conversations

Russ Laraway Career Conversations

[00:00:00] Kim Scott: Hello, everybody. I’m Kim Scott. Welcome to the Radical Candor podcast. 

[00:00:07] Amy Sandler: And I’m Amy Sandler. This week we’re back with Russ Laraway, author of When They Win, You Win: Being a Great Manager is Simpler Than You Think, talking about career conversations. If you haven’t listened to the podcast episode before this one, where we chatted with Russ, please go back and check it out.

[00:00:25] So, Russ, we want to first ask, when you talk about career, you’ve used this phrase, gravity assist slingshot. It was a real cliffhanger from our last podcast, people are chomping at the bit. 

[00:00:38] Russ Laraway: Right. 

[00:00:38] Amy Sandler: Tell us everything. 

[00:00:39] Russ Laraway: Well, first, I just want to acknowledge how embarrassed I am that I’m wearing the same clothes as last week.

[00:00:46] Amy Sandler: I think we all are. I think we all are.

[00:00:48] Kim Scott: I wear the same clothes every day, but I have several of these. 

[00:00:52] Russ Laraway: All right. Well, I apologize. I apologize. I wish, I should have changed clothes. Uh, I’ve been in these clothes for one week. Um, so gravity assist slingshot. Love that. I love that you picked that up. So, um, have either of you ever seen a space movie?

[00:01:06] Kim Scott: Yes. 

[00:01:07] Amy Sandler: Yes. 

[00:01:07] Russ Laraway: Have you? Okay. What, in the context of every single space movie ever made, what do you think the gravity assist slingshot means in the movie. Amy? You want to take a crack? I don’t want to put you on the spot. But what do they usually mean, what’s going on in the space movie when they do the gravity of sling shot, do you know?

[00:01:26] Amy Sandler: It’s not when they send the person out into gravity and they have to do a special maneuver and they’re trying to use the force of gravity to keep them alive and connected and not fall perilously to their death. Which would, unless they’re like the sidekick of the main character, in which case that’s tends to happen.

[00:01:45] Russ Laraway: Absolutely. And then they can go. They’re a minor character. 

[00:01:48] Amy Sandler: Yeah. 

[00:01:49] Russ Laraway: Yeah. Kim, would you add anything or? 

[00:01:51] Kim Scott: I always think of Apollo 13, right? Where they were going to use the force of gravity to get the ship back where it needed to go. Is it Apollo 13? 

[00:02:00] Russ Laraway: That’s one of those Apollo’s. 

[00:02:01] Kim Scott: Yeah. 

[00:02:02] Russ Laraway: So, um, yeah, in every space movie ever made, the mission has changed or the mission is in jeopardy. And they don’t have a, 

[00:02:11] Amy Sandler: The sweatshirt has not changed but the mission has. 

[00:02:13] Kim Scott: They don’t have enough power. 

[00:02:14] Russ Laraway: That they don’t have enough gas. They were at the diesel station.

[00:02:17] Kim Scott: They’re gonna use gravity instead of gas. 

[00:02:19] Russ Laraway: And so they come up with, as if they’ve themselves have never seen a space movie. They come up with in a bespoke fashion, could we try the gravity assist? It happened in the Martian. They left the guy on Mars. 

[00:02:31] Kim Scott: Yeah. 

[00:02:32] Russ Laraway: They’re heading home. They’re like, damn, we shouldn’t have left that guy. He was alive and they didn’t have enough gas and they, you know, had to find the way back. So they use the planet’s gravity to create enough acceleration to fling them off into the far reaches of space and to accomplish. That’s the idea. And so that metaphor felt really, it felt like it really hit home for me with respect to career conversations because when we talk to our employees about careers, most often all we’re talking about is the next promotion. Which is the equivalent, the home improvement equivalent, of painting yourself into a corner in a room. That does a no win conversation for a million reasons.

[00:03:08] Kim Scott: It’s never going to be fast enough and you’re never going to get paid enough and. 

[00:03:13] Russ Laraway: Yeah, and I am happy to go over why that, but it sounds like Kim, you got it. Instead, what we should be doing is helping people to identify that far off planet, kind of what they want to be when they grow up their vision. And then we as the manager, we play a pivotal role. We are the gravity assist, uh, gravity assist slingshot that helps to launch them off into the far reaches of their career. And so that’s the idea of career conversations. We gotta break out of these useless conversations we’re having that are not about career at all. Uh, they’re con, they’re conversations that mean nothing if they go nowhere. We have to actually help our employees gain some clarity on kind of what they want to be when they grew up. And now what are the tangible steps we can take right now to help them achieve that eventual career revision. 

[00:03:55] Kim Scott: It’s so much better. I mean, the way that you talk about career conversations and the gravity assist slingshot is really inspirational. But what most people do is they talk about the career ladder, which is so petty and awful. Um, so I mean, I shouldn’t be so extreme. But it does, it’s not inspiring. 

[00:04:14] Russ Laraway: It’s not career. It might be fair in a conversation of what is expected of you right now. What is expected of you at the next level? 

[00:04:23] Kim Scott: Yeah.

[00:04:23] Russ Laraway: I think a career ladder serves a really important piece there. 

[00:04:26] Kim Scott: Yes, yeah. 

[00:04:26] Russ Laraway: I don’t like that it’s named career something because it isn’t. It’s by level expectation ladder. 

[00:04:32] Kim Scott: Yes. 

[00:04:32] Russ Laraway: Is what it should be called. 

[00:04:33] Kim Scott: Yeah.

[00:04:33] Russ Laraway: There’s something, you know, not in marketing. 

[00:04:34] Kim Scott: Yeah. Well, and ladder also feels like you’re kicking the person beneath you down. Like there’s so many problems. 

[00:04:41] Amy Sandler: There’s a hierarchy. 

[00:04:41] Kim Scott: Yeah. 

[00:04:42] Russ Laraway: Basically climbing and it’s exertion, dangerous.

[00:04:45] Amy Sandler: Rather than a game of twister. 

[00:04:46] Kim Scott: And you have to go up, you know? Yes. 

[00:04:48] Russ Laraway: Also dangerous in the workplace.

[00:04:51] Kim Scott: Very dangerous in the workplace. 

[00:04:51] Amy Sandler: It is. Well, I think, you know, what I find so interesting about the career conversations and one of the phrases of just, you know, this idea that good managers invest in their people’s career, you know, it’s considering long term goals and aspirations. It’s not just about in this specific company or what you’re talking about with promotion. But just from my own experience Russ I’m curious, that has not been always my experience of managers, that they felt like that was part of their job, that that was expected. That it was actually part of being a manager was to really invest in where do you want, what is your gravity assist slingshot? So what would you say to someone who’s a manager that feels like, oh, this is a bit of a mindset shift. Like I really, you know, I really need to invest in that aspiration of my team member. How do you get them to start seeing the value of that? 

[00:05:43] Russ Laraway: Yeah, first of all, you’re right. Uh, it is not a go to, most people don’t realize it’s their job to actually actively help someone figure out what they want to be off my team, even if that’s another job inside the company, by the way, company win, but even outside the company. Um, what I’d say the values, value’s really fascinating. Of all the behaviors we studied, completing the full career conversations methodology, is the only one that had retentive properties. Even though the other, um, other behaviors drive engagement, it’s, it’s really hard to identify a very clear relationship between engagement and retention in the workplace, believe it or not. It’s surprising to folks usually, but this was very retentive.

[00:06:21] And so that first, by the way, this is the second most common pushback I get is, wait, you’re gonna tell me it’s my job to devote time and energy to helping this person like plan their next move? And my answer is, uh, yeah. It is. And, um, the first pushback is, I don’t even know what I want to be when I grow up. You think my millennial or whatever it’s generational stereotype knows? Um, I’m like, hey, we got to stop stereotypes of all kinds. Um, so anyway, one is the more, the sort of higher minded idea for me, Amy, is if everybody thinks about the person they keep in touch with after they leave a workplace, right?

[00:07:00] And whether it was someone senior to you, you know, actually, I’d say frame it up that way. You think about someone that was senior to you that you keep in touch with. I just had coffee with Jared Smith, one of the founders of Qualtrics. Why would I want to have coffee with? I asked him to have coffee. Why would I want to have coffee with Jared? Because Jared invested in me. Um, it was, there was a clear employee employer economic relationship, but the way Jared invested in me, um, took that for granted and was entirely about some other goals that I had in life, as well as in my career. And you know what, even in our coffee lab, we spent three hours. I feel like he was still doing that for me. I don’t need as much, but I really feel like he was trying to do that. 

[00:07:42] Everybody who thinks fondly about that person that they go and seek counsel from later, I bet if they examine that relationship, it was because they felt like the person invested them as a human being not just as an employee. And that’s the real difference here, helping someone get the promotion, helping someone get the pay raise, only focusing on, um, their growth in the increment, uh, is one thing, but that’s treating them like an employee. Thinking about their long term aspirations is thinking about them like a full human being. And playing a role in that, it’s a big deal, I think. Um, on top of that, uh, when you’re only focused on them as the employee or the incremental conversation about what’s next, I find you fall into the retention at all trap, at all cost trap.

[00:08:27] Kim Scott: Yeah. 

[00:08:27] Russ Laraway: So I’m gonna hang on to you, keep you on my team, that looks good. And that may not really be what’s best for this person. And at some point there’s attention and what’s fascinating about all this is you do all this work to help people uncover what they want to be outside this building, including their next role, uh, by the way, um, that may be outside this building. Fascinatingly, those people tended to stay with those managers longer. Um, and I think it’s because a lot of times people leave because they think the grass is greener. A lot of people have to say, you know what, the grass is pretty green here. 

[00:08:56] Kim Scott: Yeah. 

[00:08:57] Russ Laraway: This person’s investing me in a very unique way and I think I’m going to hang out. And oh, by the way, part of the way it works mechanically in conversation three, we’ll get to, is we encourage the manager to think about small changes they can make to this person’s role right now that help them make even small, tangible progress toward the long term career. So even, you know, you’re sitting there saying, oh, we’ve made some small revisions to my current job that can help me and so people are inclined to stay. So that’s the real value, is you actually end up retaining people longer than you would have otherwise. 

[00:09:25] Kim Scott: But it’s not the goal. 

[00:09:26] Russ Laraway: It’s not the goal. 

[00:09:27] Kim Scott: The goal is to take your own hat off and put the, you know, the other person’s hat on. 

[00:09:32] Russ Laraway: Just a great byproduct, but you’re right, not the goal. 

[00:09:35] Amy Sandler: What was the origin? You know, I know Kim has the career conversations content, uh, referenced in the book, Radical Candor. You go into a lot more detail in your book, When They Win, You Win. How did you arrive at this idea of these three career conversations? In just a moment, we’ll get into the how to so people can start putting that into practice. But how did you arrive at this press, this process? 

[00:10:00] Russ Laraway: So to answer that question, Amy, um, there’s three conversations. I just want to get us all with a kind of a common context here. Conversation one’s called the life story conversation, about an hour long, where you by understanding someone’s life stories and the changes they’ve made, you’re able to gather a set of core values or the things that they value deeply in their career. The second conversation, by far the most important, is the career vision statement. Once you have this in your head for your people, it changes everything about how you think about their development. 

[00:10:28] And then the third conversation is called the career action plan. It’s taking the content of the first two conversations, and then there’s four parts of that and helping create a tangible plan where people can make tangible progress right now for their long term career goals. So those are the three conversations, um, and the order they were created. The original model was just conversation two and three. I was seeing some things happen where I realized I was missing a lot of input, um, and so we added conversation one later. So where it came from actually is Kim’s old boss named Sheryl Sandberg. She was doing some, I don’t know what you call it, like at scale mentorship of a bunch of the next level down managers from her directs.

[00:11:06] And she, uh, someone asks a question about how do you help people with their careers? And Sheryl had this phrase she used. She said you have to have a long term vision and an eighteen month plan. I don’t care about the eighteen month part, that’s not important, but what is important is a long term vision and a short term plan. And that really stuck with me. It was, you know, when you hear these things and they just, it’s like, oh, that’s it. And I just knew right away that was it. So I started to experiment with that idea, turning it from this really awesome soundbite that Sheryl said, it’s, so it’s stuck so much so I can remember it, you know, whatever, twenty years later, whatever it is.

[00:11:41] And, uh, and started to turn that into a more useful model. What does that really mean? What would it, what was the, what does the vision mean? How do we know, what is the short term plan? What does that mean? How can we put some rigor on that? And then as I was running that and learning it and seeing the value and refining it along comes a guy, his name is Tim Malley. I don’t know if you remember Tim, Kim. 

[00:11:59] Kim Scott: Yes, of course. 

[00:12:00] Russ Laraway: He was teaching basically a version of the life story conversation, it was completely out of context. I don’t think it’s inherently useful to be totally honest with you. I mean, Tim did a great job teaching. I don’t it’s not about him. I don’t think he made it up. I don’t remember what he called it, didn’t matter. What I realized was I enjoyed getting to know where people had come from and I realized that could actually serve a little bit of a higher purpose. Which, basically, what I started to see over time was people were sort of lying to me because of a power differential.

[00:12:29] Kim Scott: Once again, power is a huge problem. 

[00:12:31] Russ Laraway: And like this one, I had this all star performer, I worked with some of my leaders like, hey, send me a high performer, I want to do this model. This young guy came in, he was all nervous, you know, his manager was named Kate, she’s sending, I won’t say his name. And this guy is awesome in our org. And I swear it was like this guy, before the conversation, went in read my LinkedIn and just was parroting back he wanted to, you know all the things he wanted to be that were exactly like me. Like one of them was like, my job, and I was like, dude, I don’t even want this job. I know you don’t. Um, and so I realized, oh, I need a way to, that people can’t lie to me. Um, every patient lies.

[00:13:09] And so instead of asking them what they value, which is very, most people are not conscious. They don’t, I’m not saying they actually mean to lie. They’re just not conscious of what they care about. I realized that if you could get people to tell you the pivots they’ve made starting literally in, from grade school on, which is tough for some people to get their heads around to ask about that in the workplace. Um, when you ask them when they make a change, if you ask them why they made that change, what they loved about the new, what they hated about the old, these kinds of questions, you learn that something they cared about very deeply. And often you observe this pattern over their course of their lives. They were making similar decisions when they were eight as they are at thirty-eight.

[00:13:48] And now I have a much better sense of the kinds of things you actually really care about in your work, in your career, where you’re trying to go. And now, as we progress the model conversations two and three, I can hold you a little bit accountable to the things you say. Because I kind of know what you deeply care about, and we can see if those things will be honored or contemplated well in the subsequent conversation. So that’s how it got going. Sheryl Sandberg mostly, uh, Tim Malley, you know, sort of a, hey, I’m here too, kind of thing, and then took it and took what were sort of soundbitey ideas and put a lot of rigor around them. 

[00:14:20] Amy Sandler: Russ, I’m so curious, like, as you were talking about that insight from Sheryl Sandberg around kind of the long term vision and the eighteenth month or really what you described as just the short term plan. In many ways, it sounds like what we talked about in our previous episode around direction, and that needing to balance both the sort of long term for team organization as well as individual. Do you think about those as kind of similar models or frameworks? How does that plan for you as a connection?

[00:14:49] Russ Laraway: Yeah, it’s really nice, really nice analogy. Um, the vision and the four part direction framework gives life to the short term goals. The vision and career conversations gives life to the actions we take tomorrow. Um, they are perfectly analogous. Um, it’s a great catch. I actually don’t think anyone’s ever caught or mentioned that before. Um, but they, it’s not, I think I like, the reason I like what you just said, Amy, is because this isn’t that fancy. All we’re doing is articulating an end state and then we’re putting some smart action in front of that, that’s, you know, that’s accessible or digestible or whatever word you want to use, that helps us make tangible progress toward that, for that long term goal. It’s the perfectly analogy. 

[00:15:34] Amy Sandler: And did you say that the second conversation was in fact the most important? Did I hear that right? 

[00:15:39] Russ Laraway: I did, I did. The reason I say that now is because what I have noticed over the years. This is a very time consuming process. 

[00:15:46] Kim Scott: So the first conversation is the past, the second is about the future 

[00:15:51] Russ Laraway: Yeah, and then third conversations about the present, what I’m gonna do right now. 

[00:15:53] Kim Scott: Right.

[00:15:53] Russ Laraway: But the order is one two three, so you go past then future then presence. I have found that it is very common for people to get started and to go full bore at this and they come out energized and they love the life story conversation and then they think they’re done. Um, and I even would go so far as to tell people if you only have one of these conversations, please have conversation two. Life story is awesome, conversation two is the most important one. If you do nothing else and you just spend fifteen minutes with someone uncovering their vision with them, uh, it will change everything about how you advise them from that point forward.

[00:16:32] Kim Scott: So I will never forget, Russ, when you came to tell me that you wanted to fly, I think you were, you had a pretty big team. You were managing, I don’t know, seventy-five managers all around the world. And you came and you said, I want budget to fly these seventy-five managers to California so that I can teach them how to have, get to know you conversations, the conversations about the future. And I’m ashamed of my reaction. So do you remember this the way I do? I was like, oh, Russ, you know, uh, and you taught me something really important then, because you were sort of so adamant that one of the things you learned as a Marine is that you’re, you know, you take care of your people and your people take care of the mission. And another thing you said you learned is that these leadership skills are skills that we can learn. Because I was sort of thinking, oh people either know how to have a get to know you conversation, because they don’t. As though this were some kind of innate ability, which it is not. These are things we learn how to do. So I wonder if you remember that the way I do. 

[00:17:42] Russ Laraway: I do. And it was about seventy-five and I brought them all to Mountain View. 

[00:17:45] Kim Scott: Yeah.

[00:17:45] Russ Laraway: And I only taught them career conversations and it was a great week. What’s really interesting about that, Kim, was after that week, um, I stood at the end of the week my closing remarks. Um, pretty, I’d say pretty classic me. I basically threatened everyone. Uh, I said, now we just went through this and we’re not going to waste it. Uh, this was really expensive. Kim didn’t even want to spend that money. She’s so cheap. I went on, I went, I elaborated about how cheap you were. No, none of that. 

[00:18:09] Kim Scott: I am very cheap. 

[00:18:10] Russ Laraway: But I said, but I said, um, here’s what I would like to do. And, you know, I’ll accept some refinements here, but roughly here’s what I’m thinking. You all now have three months to go have these three conversations with your people. 

[00:18:22] Kim Scott: Yeah.

[00:18:22] Russ Laraway: And, yeah, it was probably an August get together, so, or, you know, it doesn’t matter, right?

[00:18:27] Kim Scott: Yeah. 

[00:18:27] Russ Laraway: And, um, and I would like to hear back from my reports that we have some compliance to that. You know, and we’ll work out how to do that, but just so you know where my head is. I have every expectation every one of you will walk out of here and have these three conversations. And so, you know, with I don’t know, what that was a seven hundred person group. You know, you’re gonna have some. 

[00:18:46] Kim Scott: Yeah. 

[00:18:46] Russ Laraway: You have a lot of compliance. You’re gonna have some not. 

[00:18:49] Kim Scott: Yeah. 

[00:18:49] Russ Laraway: That’s just the nature of systems and large organizations. And what was most fascinating about that, as you probably recall is um, you know at the time, Google had this basket of career related questions in the Googlegeist or the engagement store.

[00:19:03] Kim Scott: Yeah, yeah.

[00:19:03] Russ Laraway: And no matter, we just were throwing, we had money shooting out of the vents. You could go take the most expensive class on Earth over at Wharton West, uh, Stuart Diamonds Advanced Negotiation. I don’t know why anybody needed that but people in our group are like I want to take that. 

[00:19:15] Kim Scott: Yeah.

[00:19:15] Russ Laraway: They can literally sign up. Boom. Twenty-five grand down the, well, twenty-five grand spent. 

[00:19:20] Kim Scott: Invested in you.

[00:19:21] Russ Laraway: Invested in you and it was like, what, what, what are we doing? And yet with that kind of resource put against career and growth, those, that basket of questions was tanking. 

[00:19:31] Kim Scott: Yeah. 

[00:19:32] Russ Laraway: And our group though, we had this, we were just like everybody else. No magic, magic manager Russ has no answers. Then we did that. And then we stabilized, you know, think gunshot wound, you know, like we stopped the bleeding. 

[00:19:44] Kim Scott: This was your slingshot, your gravity assist slingshot. It went zooming up. 

[00:19:48] Russ Laraway: And then those, that basket of questions went up and it was all about the employees at scale, seven hundred people feeling like their leadership was investing in their actual career, their actual growth towards something they cared about, that most of them didn’t even realize yet that they cared about. Um, and it was just about the time I left, by the way, that the HR team was coming over and saying, what is, what’s going on here? And then I was like, here’s what’s going on. And then I like resigned fourty-five minutes later. 

[00:20:19] Kim Scott: But you told them and they could have kept doing it and they didn’t, which is puzzling. Like they spend all this time measuring what works and your career conversations, nothing anyone had done at Google had mattered as much as career conversations. And yet you would think with that data, they would, it was, here we’re back to the ambiguities of experience. 

[00:20:42] Russ Laraway: There’s, some questions about this model that are fair, that I have answers for, that an HR team in particular might be nervous about.

[00:20:52] Amy Sandler: And Russ, actually one, one question, yeah, one question that we get quite a bit is, you know, if I don’t work at a place like Google where this is a thing, we will often get folks feeling like either as the person asking the question, this sounds a little bit creepy or too personal to go into kindergarten. And especially if there’s some differences between the people like, or also some concerns like, is my boss going to use this against me if I reveal some, you know, learning disability as a kid or whatever the, um, the challenge might be. So how do you speak to both the boss who might feel uncomfortable asking, the manager might feel uncomfortable asking, and the person in the potential, what they might perceive as a hot seat?

[00:21:33] Russ Laraway: Yeah, super common. Um, so first I just, um, I’m not to be a commercial for the book, but I went to some, the reason why it’s a hundred pages is because I went into detail about some of these, I call them gotchas and pitfalls, which are facilitation errors that can land you in trouble. Um, and so, first is, um, under my watch, I gotta believe I’m approaching ten thousand employees who’ve been through this model.

[00:21:58] Kim Scott: Yeah. 

[00:22:00] Russ Laraway: Um, one time, uh, an HR person came to me, to interview me, about an investigation based on what happened in conversation one. And it was a facilitation error, uh, the manager decided, I can’t understand why, but the manager decided that, um, they would really probe on that employee’s, parents divorce.

[00:22:22] Kim Scott: So strange. 

[00:22:23] Russ Laraway: And if you think about what we’re trying to get, um, it’s not actually us trying to get their biography. It’s us trying to understand pivots they’ve made in their, pivots they’ve decided to make in their lives that have let that lead us to insight about what they care about. I have a real hard time finding out how trying to open up the coconut around someone’s parents divorce gets you there.

[00:22:41] Amy Sandler: So, Russ, can I actually just like to make it practical if somebody shared, um, something personal or vulnerable like that, what is the recommended follow up or acknowledgement that you would recommend to avoid that pitfall? 

[00:22:54] Russ Laraway: The entire trick is to stay focused on asking questions about things that you think will, changes that they have made that you think will lead to something they value. Um, if you can stay focused on that, like a laser, you’ll almost always stay out of the trouble. But I’ll give you a great example where the first, uh, an employee of mine, uh, was a transgender. Um, I don’t, I had no idea and they disclosed that to me in the life story conversation and then about fifteen minutes later said, whoa, whoa, whoa, just so you know, I have never told anybody at work that before. That was a really big deal for this person. It was a really big deal for me. Uh, we took a appropriate time out of the conversation. Because then the person’s like, how is this going to be used? You know, this is going to be documented, this, that, and the other, you know, and it was, it was, I have to say, fairly easy to work out of this.

[00:23:47] And I think that’s important because can you imagine something more substantial than someone coming out of the closet at work by accident about being transgender? And by the way, with like, you know, the word, I think a lot of times the word we use is passing extremely, you know, in this case, male passing. Like, um, and so that person felt really, really vulnerable. And so, um, I said, thank you for sharing that with me, of course. And number one, number two, of course, that remains confidential. And that’s our secret. That will never, you know, I’m telling the story now with no name and no time frame. If you could get this, you’d be, you know, a great, you’d be a world class detective. 

[00:24:24] Um, and uh, and also I didn’t probe it because I couldn’t imagine how this would give me a ton of insight about what they cared about in their career. Um, so we did all the things. We let it go by. I didn’t try to open it up further. I didn’t try to get nosy. I didn’t even try to be supportive in that moment ’cause I didn’t actually realize they, said, I didn’t, I just thought they told me a fact they tell everybody. So, but I didn’t probe it because it wouldn’t, I didn’t think it would help me understand the things they care about, like autonomy or like relationships or like the things that they really want to have in their career. And then when it came that they felt really exposed for having shared that, it was assurance of the confidentiality, assurance it would never appear anywhere, assurance it would never be discussed, assurance that your secret is safe with me. And by the way, it says zero, this whole thing has zero bearing, the whole model, let alone this detail in the conversation. There’s no bearing on your performance in this group. You know, it can get real tricky. I don’t pretend like it doesn’t, but 

[00:25:25] Amy Sandler: Is there any language you like to use at the top of that first life story conversation to kind of create some guardrails or a frame so that the person feels like what they share will not be used against them either in a personal way or, oh, I’m actually not aligned with the current role that I have.

[00:25:40] Russ Laraway: Yeah, before, before I give you that, I want to give the most important prescription is before you do this with your employees, go practice this with a handful of friends at Starbucks. Um, when I train career conversations, the most time I spend is making each learning pair go through the conversation as a manager once and as an employee once, together, same pair.

[00:26:00] Amy Sandler: That’s a great tip, yeah. 

[00:26:01] Russ Laraway: Yeah, so Amy, you’d be the manager for fourty-five minutes, Kim, you would be the manager for fourty-five minutes. And you would then, you would switch roles with each other so you could, you have all that shared context. Um, because, I’m just trying to acknowledge it is a little tricky to facilitate, um, far less tricky than most people believe, by the way, but it’s tricky. Um, so.

[00:26:19] Kim Scott: And I think, sorry, we keep interrupting you but I think that one of the things that you did very definitely that this other person did not do is when you notice that person, uh, didn’t want you to probe, you didn’t probe. I think in the divorce situation, the manager, like the person said, I don’t want to talk about my parents divorce. And the manager was like, you have to talk about your parents. 

[00:26:44] Russ Laraway: Or some version, exactly. 

[00:26:45] Kim Scott: Like, like respecting boundaries is one of the things, as I recall that you taught people. Um, and usually people do respect boundaries. 

[00:26:54] Russ Laraway: And the book I call it, uh, Drop the Iron Curtain. When someone drops the Iron Curtain, you honor that and you just move on. 

[00:27:00] Kim Scott: Yeah.

[00:27:00] Russ Laraway: There’s nothing more important than maintaining trust in this relationship. And if you don’t honor the Iron Curtain they just drop, you’re going to destroy, you’re going to get far more, uh, damage than you get positive out of this. That’s one of the gotchas and pitfalls, exactly. 

[00:27:13] Kim Scott: Yeah.

[00:27:13] Russ Laraway: People will usually convey to you, we’re not going there, and your job is to not go there. You’ll get plenty, plenty from folks. Um, I’ve had people where I always started, I’ll get to your question, Amy, I always started starting with kindergarten. Tell me about your life. And I have had people just skip right over that and I don’t make them go back or something like that. There’s probably, either, I doubt they misunderstood me because they’re usually so surprised at that question. They definitely, you know, also thousands of reps, everyone starts at kindergarten. 

[00:27:42] But every now and then someone’s life picks up in high school. And, uh, and I do not, you know, and that’s a signal, um, I don’t care if they did it by accident on purpose. It’s a signal and we just that’s where we start. That’s where you want to start. That’s where we’re starting. We’re going to get plenty here. Um, just a lot of respect and being careful and being thoughtful. Um, but I think a lot of this concern, I will get back to your question, Amy, I promise. I just want to say a lot of this concern is baby bathwater stuff. Like throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Like the baby is a powerful, like, just like I’ll never forget Justin. Came out of the conversation one with his manager Dale, Dale had run. She was one of my managers. She was great And I said, how’d that go and he didn’t know it was my model. And he said, Russ, I’ve never had a conversation about my career more focused on me. I go, what? 

[00:28:30] Kim Scott: Yeah.

[00:28:30] Russ Laraway: You know? And so, um, so that’s usually the experience, not this other one. But we have to deal with this other one. And so how do I get it going? I, there’s two ways you can get this going. I am so comfortable in a good outcome now because I’ve done it so many times. I usually will surprise someone. Uh, I don’t even give ’em a heads up. Because I get the most honest version when I surprise them. And I know I will not facilitate us into a problem. I know I will not, that will not be any problem. There will not be any questions about how this will be used and all those things. Um, and I think once you’re good at this and confident in it, I think that’s a fine approach. I think when you’re starting out, though, it might not be a bad idea to give people context.

[00:29:11] Um, listen, next week, I would like to cannibalize our one on one, uh, to do this one hour conversation. And here’s what it’s about. Um, it’ll sound a little unusual, I’m gonna guess you’ve never really done it before. It’s a life story, and you explain a little. Use language from the book if you want. Let me tell you how it’s not going to be used. It’s not going to be used in performance evaluations in any kind. It is entirely going to be used for us to uncover things you care about deeply in your career as evidenced by changes you’ve made in your life that help us then in subsequent parts of these, of this career conversations model to make sure and hold ourselves accountable, that we’re getting to good answers that really do align with what you care about.

[00:29:49] Something like that, what did that take me, a minute? And most people will say yes, they’ll still have trepidation. By the way, the super common is trepidation among the person who’s going to be in the chair. Uh, they usually have trepidation and that’s usually sufficient. People usually say, okay, wait, what? This is for me and my career, cool. And, um, and off we go. And then I just beg people to get into the weeds in the book about the facilitation techniques. Those are born of, um, a lot of experience and they are the key to help you avoid the gotchas and pitfalls.

[00:30:30] Amy Sandler: So we’ve got the, conversation one is the life story. Then we’ve got the dreams looking forward, which you’ve said is actually the most important. And so if we’ve scheduled the first one just on the tactics around sixty minutes, do you like to have a certain amount of time for the dreams and then the followup action plan?

[00:30:47] Russ Laraway: Two weeks, two weeks for vision, two weeks for career action plan. 

[00:30:51] Kim Scott: After the career, um, after the conversation about the past, uh, the get to know you conversation. Russ, you do something that I think, or you recommend that managers do something that’s really important, which is you write down what you think person’s either values are or what motivates them at work. Uh, so talk a little bit about that and then let’s talk for a minute about dreams, the spirulina farm. 

[00:31:17] Russ Laraway: Yeah. 

[00:31:17] Kim Scott: We can talk about career action plan. 

[00:31:20] Russ Laraway: By the way, values is an okay word to use. We, but to be clear, we are not talking about any sort of Judeo Christian or something. It’s what you value in your job. 

[00:31:29] Kim Scott: But yeah, I always say motivator for that reason. 

[00:31:32] Russ Laraway: I know, I know. That’s just what a, it’s an okay word to use as long as we all get on the same page about the connotation.

[00:31:37] Kim Scott: What it means.

[00:31:37] Russ Laraway: So, um, yeah, I think really important and again, kind of prescribed in the book is, so while I’m in the conversation, I’m taking notes like my life depends on it. It’s uh, some people don’t like that, they feel like you’re not fully present. It’s more important for me to document this. Um, and then what I do at the end is I go through with like highlighters and colored pens and I look for the patterns. And I’ll grab a handful of stories and I’ll abstract them up and I’ll give them some name that makes sense to me and to the employee because they’re the one who told me. And I’ll, you, and I’ll say, here’s the value, let’s say autonomy. And here’s the story, three stories, you know, and I can summarize the story. The France story, the, you know, the brother story, the, um, the, you know, master’s degree story.

[00:32:20] And then I show that to them. I do that right away while everything’s fresh and I have my notes are fresh. It’s almost like a recopy your notes thing from those of you who are students or have been students. Um, and, uh, and I say, are these, okay, after all they’re yours. But I did this work and the reason I do this work, the reason I do this, um, uh, now synthesis is to show them that I heard them. Um, and also to show them they can trust how, like, it’s the beginning of showing them they can trust how this will be used. And they look at that and they’re like, oh, that makes total sense. Um, and they notice the thing that was sensitive, that they, they notice it’s not there and it’s gone. And they have a chance to affect it and all that stuff. And I, so I like to get that done. I usually try to schedule a half hour right after. And you can get, if you’re tight, you can get this done in like fifteen, twenty minutes. Um, there’s no reason it needs to take longer, you just got told all the stories. All you have to do is a little critical thinking to synthesize the stories and give them a title, reflect them back to the employee, the employee now has a couple weeks to tighten them up, you know, for whatever they’re comfortable with.

[00:33:21] Kim Scott: And does somebody, has it ever happened that, that you’ve thought you heard one thing and somebody’s like, oh no, I don’t care about that. 

[00:33:30] Russ Laraway: You know, uh, that is a really good reason to do this. I would be lying if it ever happened, if I said it ever happened to me. I’m really super present and I’m really careful about what I’m writing down and maybe it did weigh in the beginning when I was learning it. Um, but that’s another good reason to reflect back. It’s their values, give them a chance to refine this and have it read however they want. 

[00:33:51] Kim Scott: Yeah, it’s definitely happened to me. I mean, it may be the imagination of a novelist. Sometimes somebody will say something, and I’ll extrapolate something that’s not actually there.

[00:34:02] Russ Laraway: Or project. 

[00:34:03] Kim Scott: Yes.

[00:34:04] Russ Laraway: That it’s extrapolate or project which, 

[00:34:06] Kim Scott: Yeah, don’t read yourself into their story.

[00:34:08] Russ Laraway: Exactly. And maybe that’s something you just learn how to, I think a lot of us have a tendency to extrapolate, maybe it’s over time you just learn more and more how not, just not to do that. 

[00:34:19] Kim Scott: Yeah.

[00:34:19] Russ Laraway: Just to take at face value what you’re hearing and knowing I’m going to put it together and reflect it back to you.

[00:34:24] Kim Scott: Yeah. 

[00:34:25] Russ Laraway: Yeah. 

[00:34:26] Amy Sandler: So we did the life story. You summarize, you checked in with them, show that you’ve heard what they said. They, also gives them a chance to really clarify their own thinking. Now we’re in the dreams conversation. You recommended a couple of weeks between those conversations. Do you want to just paint a quick picture again knowing it’s in the book but for folks listening? 

[00:34:46] Russ Laraway: Yeah. Coming out of life story you give them a homework assignment with guardrails, again all the guardrails are in the book, about how to come up with your career vision statement or statements. Um, and, uh, give them, I usually vocalize a couple of the rules because, um, I want to get ahead of them saying that they want my job as their vision, which I just know is never true. Say, hey, by the way, the only thing you can’t put on there is my job. And I would like if you do more than, if you do more than one, I would like at least one. If you do three, I would like at least two to be outside this company. So really set the edge there to prevent, 

[00:35:17] Amy Sandler: So that really gives them some permission. Yeah, that’s great. 

[00:35:20] Russ Laraway: And also what constitutes a career vision statement. There’s sort of three questions that get, that need to get answered. It’s not living on a houseboat. That’s cool. But what it was the last thing you did before the houseboat. It’s career not life vision. And so give them some of these guardrails, but they’re all, you know, like I have a email that I just, delete Amy, I type in Kim and send. And then the expectation is, are, in two weeks we’ll get back together and we’ll talk these through. Um, so I think an insight here that should be emerging is, um, there’s a lot of times like, it’s their career, they should do the work. And then the employees like, oh, my manager doesn’t my manager never invests. And it’s the standoff that goes nowhere. Now, if you’re starting to pay attention, you’re starting to realize that what I’m doing is, imagine I’m creating time, space and accountability. And what just happened is all the work has shifted over to the employee. I do a bunch in the, it’s hard work to listen to all that and keep it, and it’s a little, it’s hard work to synthesize the life story.

[00:36:23] But from this point on the employees doing all the work, I’m just a sounding board. I’m accountability. Uh, I am guidance and, um, and now they are driving their own career plan. We just made a really, really big shift in this exact moment. Check, let’s say two weeks. I, and two weeks is arbitrary. I just want to keep it moving. I know that’s plenty of time. Uh, I know twenty-four hours is plenty of time. It’s most people can do this, they just don’t. Because no one has asked them to or feel selfish or they’ve something else on their mind. They just prioritize something else. So I like two weeks. Just keep this thing popping. We talk those through. I make sure the life story and the vision seem to hold together. I ask a lot of questions, we do a little de duping, sometimes two of the vision statements are real close, we turn them into one, sometimes, um, there’s what I call the CAV, the crazy ass vision. 

[00:37:08] Kim Scott: That’s my favorite one. 

[00:37:09] Russ Laraway: Yeah, we gotta set that one aside and maybe deal with that one a little differently, given the way the model behaves. But, um, but yeah, so we’re doing a bunch of work together, so I can really understand this. And I can, more importantly, I can make sure they really understand what they’ve done. Um, I’m putting their ideas through the rock tumbler. Uh, you know, and helping them to clarify what they think they mean. Um, so that we both have a clear understanding and we can take the next step in this model together.

[00:37:37] Kim Scott: And how important is it to have more than one vision? 

[00:37:44] Russ Laraway: You know, uh, I don’t think it’s that important. Um, it’s, the reason it’s present is it’s probably, you know, we’ve talked about some of the skepticisms on the model. Uh, one of them is this idea of people don’t know what they want to be when they grow up. So a lot of folks have the idea that they don’t want to lock in on one thing now. 

[00:38:00] Kim Scott: Yeah.

[00:38:01] Russ Laraway: And that’s okay. Um, and so we just decided well, why don’t we create a situation where you can articulate three things or five things? I don’t care. And then that’s, then I have this spreadsheet thing that, you know, kind of helps do the math underneath all that, doesn’t matter. Um, but it’s not that important to have three. I don’t have three arbitrarily, have three because you have three distinct ideas and you’re, you don’t want to choose one now. We can still work with that. Um, what happens though, most often Kim, when someone at just sort of safety, I don’t know what they, we don’t chisel any of this on your headstone, right?

[00:38:31] Kim Scott: Yeah. 

[00:38:31] Russ Laraway: But for whatever reason, out of safety, people go to have three. First of all, it’s really clear to me what’s the top one as we start. 

[00:38:37] Kim Scott: Yeah. 

[00:38:37] Russ Laraway: They lead with it, they talk about it more, it’s better to find, there’s some crappy, third one’s crappily written over here off to the side and then by the way, the second one looks a lot like the first one. Like this always happens, really clear what number one is. 

[00:38:50] Kim Scott: Yeah. 

[00:38:50] Russ Laraway: And they just don’t, they’re just not right, quite ready to say that’s the one. 

[00:38:53] Kim Scott: Yeah. 

[00:38:54] Russ Laraway: You know, it’s too big. Am I really allowed to dream like that? Is that even realistic? Is someone going to tell me I’m, you know, I’m a jerk for thinking, I don’t know what’s going on, but that almost always happens. There’s not usually three mutually exclusive. 

[00:39:06] Kim Scott: Yeah. 

[00:39:06] Amy Sandler: That is so interesting, Russ. So like, let’s say for example, one is like, who am I to think I could be the CEO is one flavor, or maybe to Kim’s spirulina farm, like who am I to think that it’s okay to run a spirulina farm? So what do you suggest, um, to encourage people that you can dream that big?

[00:39:24] Russ Laraway: Yeah. 

[00:39:24] Kim Scott: Or that different big or different. 

[00:39:27] Amy Sandler: Yeah.

[00:39:28] Russ Laraway: You know, one of my gigantic peeves in the world right now? 

[00:39:31] Kim Scott: No. 

[00:39:32] Russ Laraway: Is the notion of who’s qualified and who isn’t. Nobody’s, nobody’s friggin qualified. 

[00:39:40] Kim Scott: You can drop an F bomb on this. 

[00:39:42] Russ Laraway: Yes, I and, um, and so, so, by the way, that mindset, Amy, to your question is. 

[00:39:47] Amy Sandler: Yeah.

[00:39:47] Russ Laraway: We are in the business of enabling dreams here.

[00:39:49] Amy Sandler: I think that is such an important point if people take nothing else from this conversation. 

[00:39:56] Russ Laraway: I don’t like the person who can’t do addition who’s trying to be the CFO at Disney. We might chat that one through a little bit. But, um, but that’s not really what we’re ever talking about. I don’t, yeah, this woman who said, I want to own and operate my own spirulina farm was doing ad tech. That’s a long 

[00:40:12] Kim Scott: Selling ad servers. 

[00:40:12] Russ Laraway: Yeah. Or one woman in Australia, she was in our Adsense team. She wanted to be a German newscaster. She’s in Australia on our digital, and she wants to be a newscaster in Germany. I’m like, and so these are, sometimes some hearts, hard, it’s a hard bridge to erect to get from here to there. And that’s our damn job. You know, we’re not in the business of that’s unrealistic, that’s crazy. We’re in the business of let’s figure that shit. I love, I’m so glad, let’s figure that shit out. So very much of the business of enabling dreams, never discouraging them. Um, and then we put in the work together to figure out how you take steps today to get toward that vision, is that, is that kind of what. 

[00:40:47] Amy Sandler: Yeah, oh totally. Yeah, I think that’s great. And also just wanted to bring in, um, you know, Brandi had mentioned that she once had a new boss who said, you know that her dreams didn’t align with the current role and was gonna sort of make her life miserable. Like that’s the the worst case scenario of somebody not, uh. 

[00:41:06] Russ Laraway: That’s great, because Brandi knows the next thing to do is fix her resume, get a new job, and resign, because that is the worst boss, and we are all, we don’t have enough time to tolerate an ass clown like that. I acknowledge that’s uncomfortable, and by the way, wrong handling, um, the fact that the vision is misaligned with your path inside the company is just information. By the way, if you think at all, it’s most likely to be the case, uh, that the person’s dream is probably more likely to be aligned with what’s possible on their path here with you now. And so, really poor handling by Brandi’s boss. But also, if I’m Brandi, I’m like, oh, that’s awesome, now I know to quit. I thought I should quit, now I’m sure I could quit, and I’m getting my resume together tomorrow.

[00:41:53] Kim Scott: Yeah, yeah. So one of the things I remember, uh, Russ, is that one of your, I don’t know if this was really a vision. But one of the, one of your dreams for the future was to just ride mountain bikes all the time. 

[00:42:09] Russ Laraway: Right. 

[00:42:09] Kim Scott: Is that right? Am I remembering that right? 

[00:42:12] Russ Laraway: Yeah. Yeah. I just a bunch of work done on my Yeti five seven five this past spring that, I had to 

[00:42:16] Kim Scott: Yeah. 

[00:42:17] Russ Laraway: Get shoulder surgery, haven’t been on it. But yeah, but that’s not a career vision. That’s a life, more of a life, 

[00:42:22] Kim Scott: It was a life vision but it was like, what, it was something between the past and the future. Like one of your motivations was to have more time to be outside, and, 

[00:42:31] Russ Laraway: Yeah. 

[00:42:32] Kim Scott: Enjoy nature and, 

[00:42:34] Russ Laraway: Yeah. And look, so let’s do this in a little more crass way. A lot of people have a life goal that you may learn in this process that requires money. 

[00:42:43] Kim Scott: Yeah.

[00:42:43] Russ Laraway: What you’re talking about is me having enough freedom and independence. 

[00:42:46] Kim Scott: Yeah. 

[00:42:47] Russ Laraway: In some ways financially, um, or taking a huge step back in terms of the responsibilities of my job. There’s a few things, to create enough time. 

[00:42:55] Kim Scott: Yeah. 

[00:42:55] Russ Laraway: Go take four hour or whatever long mountain bike rides. 

[00:42:58] Kim Scott: Every day. 

[00:42:58] Russ Laraway: Um, yeah, every day or whatever. And, um, that’s actually, it’s good information. 

[00:43:02] Kim Scott: Yeah.

[00:43:03] Russ Laraway: When someone does the houseboat or the mountain bike thing. I said, okay, what we need to do then, is we need to talk about what’s the career step that happened that enabled that. And it needs to be, you know, in the, it might for a houseboat in, um, what’s that town north of the, uh, Golden Gate bridge. It begins with an S. 

[00:43:19] Kim Scott: Sausalito. 

[00:43:20] Russ Laraway: Yeah. For a houseboat in Sausalito, you’re going to need to make some funds. 

[00:43:24] Kim Scott: Yeah. 

[00:43:24] Russ Laraway: And so let’s not pussyfoot around that. Let’s make sure that career vision is something that’s going to generate the funds to have a houseboat in Sausalito. 

[00:43:31] Kim Scott: Yeah. 

[00:43:32] Russ Laraway: I don’t know what those people do all the time, but, um, but so there’s good information there, but that’s not, we don’t rest there. 

[00:43:38] Kim Scott: Yeah ,yeah.

[00:43:38] Russ Laraway: You can’t rest on that fun life goal. Um, it just gives us some information about what might precede it. 

[00:43:43] Kim Scott: Yeah. 

[00:43:43] Amy Sandler: So just wrapping it up now, we’ve got the past, we’ve got the future. Our third conversation is the action plan. 

[00:43:53] Russ Laraway: Yeah. Four parts. What can we change in your current role that helps us make progress toward the long term vision. What should be my next job given my long term career vision? I don’t want to call, um, develop your skills. That’s really about like third party or external training. Um, Russ, should I get an MBA? I don’t know. What’s your career vision? Like, I can’t answer that question without, you know, or should I go to this conference or should I go to the seminar? Should I take these night classes? You know, the, uh, I did this with a bunch of middle schoolers, one, ESL middle schoolers in Utah here. And, um, when we got to this part of doing the classes part, um, I was asking the middle schoolers, okay, what’s an action item you’re going to take that will help you achieve your vision. We had two veterinarians, a doctor, a master mechanic. It was really sweet. And, uh, one of the kids moms who was chaperoning raised her hand and through broken English, she said, I had no idea the parents were participating. She said, uh, my dream is to be a nurse and I’m starting nursing classes at UVU next semester.

[00:44:54] Kim Scott: Wow. 

[00:44:54] Russ Laraway: I was like, holy shit. I, you know. And so anyway, what’s the kind of stuff I need to go do that, to learn formally in order to realize my dream? And then last is identify, develop your network. Who are the people that can inform and influence either the next step or the path or the long term vision? Um, informational interviews. Just go out and ask, you know, one person that worked for me, wanted to be project, product manager at Google. I did the simplest thing. I got a lunch meeting with him and one of the senior product leaders in the company that I was, you know, had a relationship with. So who can inform and influence. So change role, what’s the next job, formal training opportunities to get you more prepared? Um, and then, um, and as wide as that can be. And then last is, who are the people around us that we know or who you know, or that I know that can help us to inform and influence your choices. 

[00:45:45] Amy Sandler: All right. Well, thanks for a great chat, Russ. Two episodes, people want more of you. I know they want more of you. How can they find you? 

[00:45:54] Russ Laraway: I think easiest is LinkedIn, uh, sadly, um, but that’s probably the best place now. I post a little bit there. I’m pretty responsive. Um, yes, I think LinkedIn’s probably, I mean, I’m so easy to find. There’s very few Russ Laraways in the world. Even fewer bald ones, even fewer with a pretentious, uh, headshot. So uh, that you, once you found Russ Laraway, bald, pretentious headshot, you found the right guy. 

[00:46:19] Amy Sandler: That’s the one. All right. 

[00:46:20] Kim Scott: And you also have a great website, I think. 

[00:46:23] Russ Laraway: Oh, WhenTheyWinYouWin.com. 

[00:46:24] Kim Scott: Yeah. 

[00:46:24] Russ Laraway: Although Dick Costolo tells me I need to shorten that. 

[00:46:27] Amy Sandler: All right. And that is the name of the book. Check it out. When They Win, You Win. And Russ, close us out with our tips to putting, not just Radical Candor, but career conversations into practice. 

[00:46:41] Russ Laraway: Yeah. You love a three point checklist and I am not doing that. I’m doing a one point checklist. I didn’t tell you that before because I thought you wouldn’t let me do it. So now, surprise! One point checklist. Which is, um, all I want you to do for career conversations, I do want you to get a copy of the book. I’m so sorry to ask that, but it’s where you learn. I want you to focus exclusively on conversation two. I want you to read everything we have in there about how to do that well. And I want you to develop with your directs a working career vision statement for two or three, for each one of your directs. 

[00:47:21] That’s all I, that’s all I want you to do. If you just do that, it will completely change how you think about, how you invest in them, where you’re trying to help them go, where they’re trying to go. It will change your relationship for the better in almost a finger snap. Let’s worry about conversation one and conversation three another day. All I want you to do is go work out some career vision statements. Not, don’t just go wing it, learn how to do it. I think that, I think the book’s only like fifteen bucks now, I mean, come on. And uh, and then just go, go learn how to do it, and do it, do that really well. Do a few of them with all your directs and then see where you are. You’re going to be in a great place, I already know. And uh, you’re going to be totally sold and then now we can talk about opening things up with conversation one and conversation three. 

[00:48:09] Kim Scott: Love it. As always for Russ, such a pleasure. Thank you so much. 

[00:48:13] Russ Laraway: My pleasure. 

[00:48:14] Amy Sandler: Thank you, Russ Laraway. When They Win, You Win, and head on over to RadicalCandor.com/podcast for the show notes for this episode. Praise in public, criticize in private. If you like what you hear, please rate and review wherever you’re listening. If you’ve got criticism for us, we read everyone, email it to podcast@RadicalCandor.com. And don’t forget to join the Radical Candor community at RadicalCandor.com/communitypodcast to get this very podcast early and ad free. Bye for now. 

[00:48:51] The Radical Candor podcast is based on the book Radical Candor: Be a Kick Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity by Kim Scott. Episodes are written and produced by Brandi Neal with script editing by me, Amy Sandler. The show features Radical Candor co founders Kim Scott and Jason Rosoff and is hosted by me, still Amy Sandler. Nick Carissimi is our audio engineer. The Radical Candor podcast theme music was composed by Cliff Goldmacher. Follow us on LinkedIn, Radical Candor, the company and visit us at RadicalCandor.com.

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The Radical Candor Podcast is based on the book Radical Candor: Be A Kickass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity by Kim Scott.

Radical Candor podcast

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.

The Radical Candor Podcast theme music was composed by Cliff Goldmacher. Order his book: The Reason For The Rhymes: Mastering the Seven Essential Skills of Innovation by Learning to Write Songs.

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