August 20, 2025 • 33 mins
How can leaders navigate the messy middle of management, especially when it comes to delivering difficult news without damaging relationships or morale? In this episode, Kevin talks with Mahesh Guruswamy about the real-world challenges leaders face when communicating unwelcome information, from missed deadlines to ethical violations. Mahesh shares a thoughtful approach to raising the temperature of conversations gradually and when situations call for urgent, high-stakes responses. They also discuss the difference between technical and adaptive feedback, the importance of intentional communication, and the human side of letting team members go.
Listen For
00:00 Introduction
02:02 Meet Mahesh Guruswamy
06:03 The Messy Middle of Leadership
06:24 When Should Leaders Deliver Bad News
07:17 Listening to Your Intuition as a Leader
08:06 Raising the Temperature Slowly
10:24 When to Start at a Higher Temperature
12:04 When Urgency or Ethics Demand Immediate Action
13:04 Communicating the Stakes with Your Team
13:46 Writing as a Tool for Delivering Difficult News
14:51 Lessons from Amazon on Written Communication
16:06 Documenting Over Slide Decks for Clarity
17:17 Reviewing Recordings to Improve Communication
18:45 The Power of Leadership Language
21:11 Balancing Policy and Humanity in Difficult Conversations
22:09 Helping Team Members Find Better Fit Elsewhere
22:58 Avoiding Emotional Delivery of Feedback
23:59 Two Types of Feedback Technical and Adaptive
25:42 Giving Feedback to Your Boss
26:56 Should You Be a Manager Key Questions to Ask
28:28 Can You Succeed Without External Validation
28:55 Giving Credit to the Team Not Yourself
30:31 Mahesh’s Personal Interests
32:51 Final Thoughts and Call to Action
Mahesh's Story: Mahesh Guruswamy is the author of How to Deliver Bad News and Get Away with It: A Manager's Guide. He is a seasoned product development executive who has been in the software development space for over twenty years and has managed teams of varying sizes for over a decade. He is currently the chief product and technology officer at Kickstarter. Before that, he ran product development teams at Mosaic, Kajabi, and Smartsheet. Mahesh caught the writing bug from his favorite author, Stephen King. He started out writing short stories and eventually discovered that long-form writing was a great medium to share information with product development teams. Mahesh is passionate about mentoring others, especially folks who are interested in becoming a people manager and newer managers who are just getting going.
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Flexible Leadership is every leader’s guide to greater success in a world of increasing complexity and chaos.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:08):
are you ready for some bad news?
As a leader,sometimes you have to deliver bad news.
Well, that's a hard truth. And doingit can be hard.
It is an important part of our job.
And that's why I'm excitedto be talking about that today
with my guest, who I will introduce to youin just a second.
Welcome to another episodeof the Remarkable Leadership Podcast,
where we are helping leaders like you growpersonally and professionally
(00:33):
to lead more effectivelyand make a bigger difference
for their teams,organization, organizations and the world.
If you are listening to this podcast,you could join us live in the future
for episodeson your favorite social media platform
and you can find out when thosewill happen and how you can join us
by connecting with us on our Facebookor LinkedIn groups.
(00:55):
Those aren't the only places that we go
live to live stream,but they're the most prevalent ones.
You can join usand learn more at remarkable
podcast.com/facebookor remarkable podcast.com/linkedin.
And if you'll do that, you'll know whenwe're going live and then you can join us.
Today's episode is brought to youby my latest book, Flexible
(01:15):
Leadership Navigate Uncertaintyand Lead with Confidence.
It's timeto realize that styles can get in our way,
and that following our strengthsmight not always be the best approach
in a worldmore complex and uncertain than ever.
Leaders need a new perspective,a new set of tools
in order to create the great resultsthat their teams and organizations need.
(01:36):
That'swhat flexible leadership can provide you.
You can learn more and order your copytoday at remarkable podcast.com/flexible.
And with thatI'm going to bring in my guest.
Now bring him back in.
There he is.
I'm going to introduce himand then we will dive in.
My guest today is Mahesh Guru Swami.
He is a seasoned productdevelopment executive
(01:59):
who has been in the softwaredevelopment space for over 20 years.
He's managedteams of varying sizes for over a decade.
He is currently the Chief Product
and Technology Officer at OfficerExcuse Me at Kickstarter.
Before that, he ran project developmentteams at Mosaic Kajabi and Smartsheet.
Smart sheet I don't think I said thatright the first time.
(02:22):
Mahesh caught the writing bugfrom his favorite author, Stephen King.
He started out writing short storiesand eventually discovered
that longform writing was a great mediumto share information
with product development teams.
We're going to talk a little bitmore about that.
All of that resulted in his new book, Howto Deliver Bad News and Get Away With It.
A Manager's Guide.
He is passionate about mentoring others,especially folks
(02:43):
who are especially interestedin becoming a people manager
and newer managerswho are just getting started.
Mahesh, thank you for joining me.
Oh, thanks for having me.
I was way too kind, Kevin.
Well, you know, I justI called your mom and got it.
So, listen, I'm so glad that you're here.
(03:04):
I love this book.
And we are going to talk about ita little bit.
And, and in the in the intro, I hinteda little bit at two as to how it came
to be that you as a product developmentexecutives started to do writing.
And we'll talk more about that too.
But really sort of what'swhat gets you to this place,
(03:24):
not just with the book,but you didn't when you were eight.
You didn't want to be.
I want to be a product developmentexecutive,
sort of like, tell us a little bitabout the backstory that leads here.
I talk about this a lot.
You know, both with my teams andand publicly to growing up,
I wasI would consider myself an average kid.
I, I didn't have any,
(03:47):
big ambitions
or any, you know, like,my son has got his 11 year old.
He has goals that he already has,like his future plan now.
And I was not like that at all.
I think the thing that
that activated something in meis, after I came to the States
to get my masters, I came to this day,it's about 20 some years ago.
(04:08):
And when I realized that corporate America
values throughput and bias for action
and getting stuff doneand taking ownership,
and that I,I realized that I had a lot of that in me.
So that activated something in me.
So when you see success,you kind of double down on it.
And that's what I did.
(04:29):
I kind of double down,double down, double down. And
I think
the, you know, like you mentioned in yourintroduction about your book, right?
It's it's not so much about, you know,following your passion, like saying like,
follow what you're really good atand double down on that.
So when I was a developerlike 20 years ago,
everybody is like, yeah,you're really good at getting stuff done.
(04:50):
So I double down on that.
When I became a manager.
The feedback that I got was,you're really good at getting people
to organize, and you're, you're ableto get the most out of people and teams.
And I sort of double down on thatwhen I first became an executive.
The feedback from my then-CEO boss was,you really understand
(05:10):
how businesses work and you were ableto, like, grow them or help them grow.
And I got double down on that.
I think my writing is my passion,is what I would say, but I wouldn't
consider writing as something that paysthe bills for, you know, per se, I.
Well, unless this bookbecomes atomic habits that.
(05:30):
I. That's right, that's right,that's right.
So I think I think like findingwhat I was good at, which is, you know,
aligning myself for output,aligning myself for getting stuff done,
and getting my teams to do the same thing
is, is what got mehere is what I would say.
I love that.
So, you talk at the beginning of the bookabout the fact that there's
(05:51):
a lot of books written about, like,why we should lead and a lot of,
like, sort of high andand big picture sorts of things.
Because you say that this book is kind ofabout the messy middle.
That's right.
The messy middle of leading.
And I said it in the intro that, you know,
we as a leader,we're going to have to deliver, difficult
messages, messages that we don't wantto necessarily live or bad news.
(06:13):
We can call it lots of things andyou call it lots of things in the book.
I think the first place to start,and it's actually
where you start in the book as well, is
how do you decide when to deliver it?
Because there's there's a decisionthat we have to make about,
sharing or withholding like and,and when to share,
(06:35):
when to withhold and how longand all those sorts of things.
I think that's an important decisionpoint.
I'm curious, from your perspective,
what are the flags?
What are the triggers for for you,for you to say, hey, I can't put this off.
I can't ignore this.
I need to deliver this message.
How do you go about.
(06:56):
I think it really dependson the situation, but, few,
kind of tricks that I use, or
I like tricks that I use is,
you know, there's, like,a small part of your brain goes, you know,
something is wrong.
You shouldyou should, like, intervene here.
So for the longest time, I wouldhow can I ignore that voice?
(07:17):
Because it's like,you know, things don't seem that bad.
Maybe things will recover on their own.
Maybe teams will figure out
how to get this sort of deadlines,like pull back in, etc..
But as I got older,I got more experience in this role.
The the reality is you,
that is the small voice in the back ofyour head is your intuition,
which is which is kind of seeingall these situations play out in the past
(07:41):
and is now giving you the early warningthat something might be,
might be happening.
The approach that I use is raising thethe temperature slowly.
So when a project is behind, for example,that's a really, really good moment
for leaders to intervene and find out I'msorry when it's not going well.
When a project islike behind on its timelines,
(08:03):
is the moment when
leaders are expected to interveneand find out what's going on.
I almost always kind of raisethe temperature slowly.
So in the first meeting I was like,hey, the hey team,
you committed this to be done last weekor in the week after.
What's what's going on?
And almost always when I use as have
a casual low temperaturepoking and prodding teams will.
(08:25):
Yeah. You know, we've this happened.
So we know we have accommodatedfor that now and we're back on track.
Same goes for people too.
If people are not hitting
their commitments for conversationis almost always casual because,
you know, people are not infalliblelike they have personal lives going on.
They have,
you know,they could be dealing with health issues,
they could be dealing
with personal problems at home,or could be it could be whatever.
(08:48):
Right.
So in the first conversation, I'll alwaystry to understand what's going on.
The second conversation is slightlyhigher temperature and say, hey,
things haven't recovered.
What are wewhat can we do to get this back on track?
And the third conversation is almostalways the the messy bit, which is,
okay, this is you know,this is when you have to use one of
these words is unacceptableor this is not great
(09:12):
or you know, we have to like, recoverquickly, etc., etc..
So the key is like like revising.
Revise it like increase temperatureslowly is what I would say.
And usually it is
two buckets of
situations I one is projects becominggetting behind where you have to intervene
and the, the other one is somebodycomplaining about one of your people.
(09:36):
And almost always like managershave this tendency
to be very protective of their team.
And they should bethey should be protective of the team.
They should protect them from,
from that kind of like whatever,like others might say about them.
But if a peer or a,
another individual on a different teamor somebody on your team is complaining
about someone,you as a leader has to react to that
(09:58):
you can't ignore and hopehoping that the problem would go away.
It won't.
Yeah, it's unlikely to go away on its ownin that case.
You just talked a little bit about,And I love that point.
Like, listen to that voice,listen that intuition.
And don't don't,
don't put it on pause and don't ignore it.
Right. I think that's really good advice.
(10:20):
So now you've started talk a little bitabout this idea of preparing to deliver
it. And I love this conversationabout what temperature am I going to use.
And I'm going to turn upthe temperature slowly.
I'm going to do that intentionally.
Is there ever a time when you
don't start at casual,
like when you've got to bump upthe temperature faster or,
(10:43):
you know,
you like my wife does on the stovesometimes, like start out on high, like,
is there ever a time that you do thator what's your advice around that?
I think the itit really kind of depends on the end,
outcome or goal you're driving towards.
So for example, if you have I'mjust making a hypothetical example.
(11:04):
Right.
So let's say your, your, your working onan, on a Super Bowl ad, Super Bowl day.
It's not going to change.Right. It's there.
No chance.
It's no. Change.
Nobody's going to change the date for you.
So and every day is going to be importantas you march towards that date
and even a day or two of,
(11:26):
delays will impact everythingin the, in the, in the pipeline.
So those are moments where I would raisethe temperature immediately.
I think for me, in my role,if we're made a big commitment
to a big customer, you know, that is,you know, and if we have tied,
marketing events together, thenthat's a day that we can't miss, right?
(11:48):
So we have to, like,deliver on time. So that's one,
example where you would, like, immediatelyraise the temperature
and your team should knowor you should share with the team
why you're raising the temperatureimmediately.
Because you can change the Super Bowl.
So you have to, like,deliver this thing on time.
So what can we doto get this back on track.
So that's number one.
And hopefully that won't bea surprise to them like they should.
(12:10):
Or that date isn't movable. Right.
And that's right. So hopefully
because what I love about your point,your point of this whole
idea of the temperature is thatI want to send the message in a way
that that I'm engaging the teamin the solution.
That's right.
What you're saying here isI don't have any choice.
And hopefully they understandthat they may not love the message,
(12:33):
but they at least understand the message.
That's right, that's right, that's right.
The the other category of situationswhere I have increased the temperature
quickly is, ethical
air policy violation type, type deals.
Right.
So if, if an employee comes to meand says, I been harassed,
then I do have like react to itvery quickly and very appropriately.
(12:57):
So situationslike those are another categories of,
of things where I expect leadersto immediately like,
you know, raise the temperature.
Yeah, I love that.And that's that's exactly right.
So you talk it there's a chapter.
I mean, we've already outlinedthe fact that you've determined
that you like to write and that youclearly have some skill in writing.
(13:17):
I'm talking with Mahesh, who were Swami,the author of the new book,
How to Deliver Bad Newsand Get Away With It.
So we know that you can write,and you, you make a comment.
What's a chapter really?
But you make a comment about the factthat sometimes the best way to deliver
the news, good or bad, is in writing.
And so I would say that's it. For me.
(13:40):
That's a yes.
And but I'd love for you to talk about theyes part.
Yeah. Yeah.
Why do you say that?
Because I think there's we could have it.
We could have thathave a healthy dialog about it.
And yet I understandthe point you're making.
So so share with us that.
Yeah it's it's definitely.
Yes. And and I'll explain my. Yes.
This is something I learned and Amazon
and Amazon is a very data detailoriented company.
(14:04):
So everything that they do,
is centered around the detailsof what they're talking about.
So when I first startedmeeting at Amazon, I said,
I wasreporting that a project is like behind.
So I was reporting to my bossthat the project is behind.
I said the project.
So I kind of said it, verbally
in a meeting that the project is behind.
(14:26):
So the next question was why is it behind?
So then I had to. Logical.
Which is. Like price to get directly.
Exactly.
So and then I thinkand then I had to like to think about it
in the moment and say,oh, this is why it's behind.
And then they're like,okay, what are you doing about it?
So what is a new day?
And so for me, it is when you'redelivering some of these brand new pieces
(14:47):
of information, I just encourage peopleto have a script around it.
So if you are delivering deliveringa status update, you write the status
update down, send it to your boss,and then you like give a voiceover.
If you do your writing correctly,then you don't even need a voiceover.
You can just tackle the questionsthat are going to come out of it.
And the my objective after likemy time on Amazon was whenever I
(15:12):
whenever I deliver information to people,which is somewhat controversial
or somewhat, you know, imperfect.
You know, I go for having all the detailsready and written down
and then go have the conversation,you know, with, with people.
Having said that, I'm not I am by no meansI'm perfect, but giving your brain
a chance to think throughthe narrative is important because,
(15:37):
if I like if we are living in a world
where attention spans are minuscule, so.
And we have, accidentallytrained ourselves to respond and react
in soundbites, which is so terrible forfor the professional world in general.
Right. Like, we there's so much nuancein what everybody does.
There's so much,
(15:58):
missing context and detailsand all the big decisions
people, companiesand governments are making.
So I kind of deliberately,go the other way.
I want to, like,hold on to the to the critical
thinking part of my brain, which is like,okay, you said this statement.
Why are you saying this statement? Like,what does it mean?
What are the aftermath?
What what's the next steps?
(16:20):
So I encourage people to, which is why,like one of the things I write in
the book isI don't like slide decks at all
because the surface area of a slidedeck is very limited.
So you resort to putting bullet pointsand you provide voiceovers.
But what are the chancesthat you can remember all the notes
for yourself in the voiceover?
Chances are you you won't.
So which is why when I do reviews withmy team, it's almost always a document.
(16:44):
So everybody writes a narrativeabout what is going on in the world.
We pre-read the document,or we read the document in the meeting
and we discuss the comments.
Which is an Amazon approach, which is.
The Amazon approach. Yeah.
So you tell anotherstory and I'm going to take an aside
because I think that you share an example
(17:05):
that helpsyou get to the point about the writing.
That I think is incredibly useful.
And it's kind of it's almost offtopic. Right.
I mean, it's incredibly importantthat you're nodding your head.
I think you know where I'm headed,but this isn't a book report.
So let me play this out.
Like you,
you shared some informationwith your team,
some really important informationwith your team.
And when you were done,
(17:27):
you expected a result that you didn'tget a response that you didn't get.
And then you didsomething really important.
You went backand watched the recording of this.
Right.
And so I just want to tell everybodythat, like,
for all of the things that people sayabout,
well, I mean, we have meetings in person,it's better and all that stuff.
(17:47):
And of course, there's lots of reasonsthat that can be true.
And yet many of our meetings are recorded,
and most of us,probably at some point in our life,
took a course on public speakingwhere video played
a huge role in our ability to get betteror at least be aware.
And yet we're not doing that.
So a little bit about because reallywhat I'm trying to do is raise up your,
(18:11):
your example as somethingthat we have access to and aren't doing.
So you want to say more about that?Both. Yeah.
And then anything you want to add towhat I just said.
I think the one big thing that I would addto what you just said,
as leaders progressing their careers,
the more important their words become.
(18:33):
So you might not realize it as a leader,
but your team will latch onto every single word you use
when you're talking about a specific topicor a specific,
in or in a specific meeting.
And I realize that over time isyou have to be very careful
and thoughtful about what you say.
And I made that, you know,
I made the mistake of saying the incorrectthings or the incomplete things.
(18:56):
Actually, the incomplete things arethe most common mistakes that managers
make, including myself, is in youryou set out to say X
and you say x -50%. Right.
So I think it's important if you want tobecome a well-rounded leader,
go look at your recordings
and find out how many timesyou said the wrong things,
(19:20):
how many times you used verbalgraffitis like ons, ums, etc.
you might not think it's a big deal,but it distracts
people from the message that you're tryingto deliver and ask people for feedback.
You know, my the
executive team at Kickstarter that I workwith is very open to giving feedback.
So I ask often, hey,how did I do in this meeting?
And they'll give me a scorecard,but that was a B plus.
(19:43):
That was a B minus, never an error becauseit means you're doing it really well.
And you had like stop learning, right?
So it's always a B minus or a B plus.
Well andso a b plus you feel pretty good about.
But that doesn't mean you're there. Right.That's right.
I love that.
I appreciate you sharing that.
And sort oflet me take a bit of an aside there.
I think the point that you made aboutthe higher we move in an organization,
(20:05):
the more our words matteris a really important point.
So those of you that are listening,that's sort of a mental highlight to me.
I think of one of the things thatthat I hope that you take from this,
throughout the book,you talk about delivering messages
to stakeholders,to your boss, lots of other things.
And yet one of the places where
I think everyone,if they say I've got to deliver bad news,
(20:27):
one of the things that comes into our mindis like a performance review, corrective
feedback in a situation or whomeverthat might be boss or otherwise.
But usually we're probably thinkingof someone that reports to us or design
team or whatever.
So what advice doyou have for us around that?
I think the,
the, the one, the biggest piece of advicethat I would want to give out
(20:51):
is the HR way of doing
things is one aspect of this conversation.
There's also the human sideof this equation that I encourage
people to not forget.
And what I mean bythat is the underlying assumption
that I make with any anybody that I workwith is these are these are people.
(21:12):
They're not robots. They're not numbers.
That's a really good assumption.Mahesh. Right.
They're they're all likethey're real people with with ambitions,
careers, families, lives, emotions,dreams, aspirations, etc..
Right. That's number one.
It's kind of changesthe way you approach conversations.
Number two is I like to believeand I could be wrong here,
(21:33):
but I, I like to believethe 99.9% of the professional world
is really good at what they do,but then it might not be good at,
good for thecompany or for the role that they're in.
So when somebody exits my teamor I had like let somebody go,
most of the time they're not a good fitfor the role or the company.
(21:53):
They're, they're, they're adand I share that with them that,
hey, this doesn't meanthat you will not be successful elsewhere.
And the professional world is very large.
And, I like to believe that if you are,if you have the education,
you have the qualifications,you have the experience,
you can be successful elsewhere.
So people who I'd like let go from Amazonended up becoming successful at Google.
(22:15):
People who I let go from Smartsheetended up becoming successful at meta.
Like all these things are possible,and I share that with people very openly.
And sometimes I even reach back outafter the conversation and ask them,
hey, do you can I help outwith introductions or or whatever?
And the and the and the last thingI'll say is one of the things that
(22:36):
that managers accidentallyfall into the trap that they fall into
is convincing themselves themselvesto dislike the other person,
the personwho's receiving the poor feedback.
And that is a trap that I encourage peoplenot to fall into
because your your mind is
automatically wired to deliver bad newswhen you're angry and upset.
(22:59):
And I encourage managers and leadersto like, fight that temptation
because if you do it that way,then the other person will feel it.
And I know in the moment you might notthink anything about it, but longer term
it might have lasting damages to their dotheir confidence to all the things right.
If if anyone who's listening is a parentthat you've
(23:23):
you've done it and, and I mean well,I shouldn't say that I know I did,
and and
and no one, no one won in that moment.
That moment, I guess in a moment
I felt a little bit better,but was a clear message delivered?
Was the feedback accepted and applied?
No. It did I deliver it in a way that wasthat was helpful. No.
(23:45):
I mean, yeah, I'm with you 100%.
I'm so glad that you shared that.
You know, there's
there's another thingyou talk about in the book.
You most of the time, if you ask people,
are there two kinds of feedback?
They'll say, yep, positivefeedback and negative feedback.
And of course, it'sthere's nothing wrong with that answer.
You say there's twoother kinds of feedback.
What are they?
(24:07):
So this is this is when it comesto giving critical feedback.
I like to categorize them as technicalfeedback and adaptive feedback.
I can kind of pull those terms from,
from one of my favorite leadership books,which is called leadership on the line,
where they talk about technical changes,technical problems and adaptive problems.
So what I mean by that issometimes the feedback is straightforward
(24:29):
and it has a straightforward,way to fix it.
So for example, if I tell you,
you know, Kevin, in this report,you did this wrong.
The fix is easy.
Why do you go back and fix a reportand and that's it.
So that those kinds of feedback, I wouldcategorize them as technical feedback.
Adaptive feedback is harder to givebecause it challenges
(24:51):
what makes Kevin Kevin.
So for example, if I tell youyou're not inspirational enough,
or you're not motivationalenough, or you are rude or,
the team doesn't respond to youwell or you're not strategic enough,
those things like attackthe way you know, you operate,
you know, it's the way you're builtand the way I think that you hold true.
(25:12):
Whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
So so those kinds of feedback,I, I encourage people
to, to think hard about,
whether you want to give that feedbackor not directly because
there's often a situationwhen you have to give critical
feedback to your bosses, because that'swhere this shows up the most.
(25:32):
And I encourage if you're goingif you're going to give critical feedback
to your boss, I encourage you to do itin small doses for us
to see if your boss will respond to it.
Chances are your work or how they willrespond, or how bad, right?
That's right, that's right, that's right.
And I encourage people to do itduring peace times.
(25:52):
So when things are calmand things are quiet,
I encourage people to try it outwith their boss.
The other the flip side of it is,
you know, leaders are hiredfor a skill that they have.
And if the feedback you're giving
goes attacks that skill, chances are it'snot going to go well.
So, for example,
let's say you're working for a companyand the CEO is hired to
(26:13):
to turn around the companyand really, really wants to cut costs
because that's the waythey've been successful.
If you go tell them don't cut costs,it's just not going to work.
I think just that's the way they are.
So you just have to realizethat some pieces of feedback are easy
to act on, which is technical feedback,but others are harder to act on,
which are adaptive feedback.
(26:34):
I think that's a really useful,
distinction for all of us.
And I appreciate yousharing a little bit about that.
The other thingI want to take before we start to wrap
up, and I ask you a couple otherfinal things.
The very end and I hinted at this in thewhen I introduced you,
that you are passionateabout helping people figure out
if they my words now, if they really wantto be managers or leaders or not.
(26:58):
And you close the book with sort of a,
a, a series of questionsto help people think about that.
And obviouslypeople need to go get a copy of the book.
And when they do that, how to deliverbad news and get away with it.
You're going to getthat bonus as an appendix.
But but,
what are a couple things, for peoplethat are listening,
whether it's for themselves,if they're an aspiring leader
(27:20):
or for someone who's leadingand they're sort of wondering why,
why did how did I end up here?
What are a couple of sort of key thingsthat people ought to ask themselves?
Yeah,I think the biggest realization for me,
which is also in that quiz in the inthe end is can you,
define success for yourself internally
without needing any external validation?
(27:43):
Because one of the things I realizedas I grew
as a leader, as a as a manager,
the number of times people will tell youyou're doing a good job is going to reduce
and reduce or reduceeventually will become zero,
because your successis tied to the success of the company.
So if you're an individual contributorand you're used to being validated
through your boss or through your peers,or if everybody is telling you
(28:07):
you're doing a good joband that's how you drive in drive,
derive your sort of internal motivationand validation,
then you'll have a tough timebecoming a manager.
So that's one thing that I encourage,
people to think through is believe survivewithout validation
for extended periods of time,because whatever you do as a manager
is like a long game, like, you know,you know, doing things for one day
(28:29):
today, weeks, months.
It's like sometimes years before youfind out whether you're successful or not.
So that's number one.
And number two is can you comfortably
step out of the limelightand give the spotlight to somebody else?
Because, the success of my organization,the success of the tech team
at Kickstarter is 100%the credit goes to the team who works
(28:50):
on the productsand features and services, etc.
so can you step away from the limelightand give the spotlight to somebody else?
It's very, very hard for you and sometimesexperienced professionals to do.
So if you find yourself asking for,
you know, creditor praise often in your current job,
then you're going to have a tough timeas a as a leader.
(29:13):
Yeah, I love that second onebecause I think everyone who's listening
has seen that boss or had that boss.
That's right.
Step out of the limelight.
And I'm guessing that everyonewho has seen or heard that boss does not
necessarilyhave a positive feeling about that moment.
So we want to I always say we can learnfrom any leader, including what not to do.
(29:35):
That's right.
That's what not to do.
That's right. All those things not to do.
Is there anything that we didn'ttalk about
or thatI didn't ask that you wish I would have?
No, I would want to, like,
close with by saying that,even though management is messy.
But I don't want to discourage peoplefrom stepping into that role
because it can be incredibly rewardingto win through your teams
(29:58):
because you're not just affectingthe company, you're
not just affecting the customers,the company you're serving,
but also the lives and careers of thethe people on your team,
which could be incredibly rewardingif you look at it the right way
and understand, the messy middlebefore you get into it.
I absolutely agree 100%.
(30:21):
I've got a couple of other questionsthat I want to ask before we go.
And the first one isso when you're not doing all this
great work and delivering all thisnews, what do you do for fun?
I like to read a lot.
That's kind of what I do on the side.
Read and write a lot.
And also, you know, the being in executiveroles is is stressful.
(30:44):
So the way that I, I kind of removethe stress is, is run outside.
So I kind of like, try to get outsideand get a good jog in once in a while.
So reading, writing and runningis what I would say I like doing.
All right.
So if we have had a chance to chatahead, I would have told you
this question was coming.
So I learned.
By the way, I forgot to say thisat the beginning, everybody,
(31:07):
this conversation that Mahesh and I arehaving is the 500th episode.
Oh, what?
This show and what I learned, I usuallyI tell people this before we start,
what I learned everybody a long time agois this next question I'm going to ask
if you've listened to long time,you know what I'm going to ask?
Mahesh doesn't know.
I learned a long time agoI'm better off asking this question ahead.
(31:27):
So I'm going to askanyway because I want to know.
But I don't.
I hope it doesn'tput you too much on the spot.
Manish, I want to know, what you'rereading these days.
No surprise.
I'm readingStephen King's new book, Never Flinch.
Awesome.
So, you know, the reasonthat I learned a long time ago
(31:49):
is sometimes I'd ask people in their eyesget why they can't remember a title.
They want to golook at their Kindle or whatever.
I'm so glad that you could go right to it.
We will have never flinched.
The link to that in the show notes,as well as a link to Mahesh in his book,
How to Deliver Bad Newsand Get Away with It A Manager's Guide.
And before we go, what is it that.
(32:09):
How do you want to whatwe're doing to point people?
Is there anything you want to tell peopleabout connecting with you?
Anything at allthat you want to share before we wrap up?
Yeah.
So you can find me on my Guru swami.comor on LinkedIn, where I'm pretty active.
If you are a leader or an executive
and you need additional helpor need a sounding board, reach out to me.
The contact information is on my phone.
(32:31):
Become all right. It's there.
We'll have that in the show notes as well.
And now, everybody, before we say goodbye,the question I ask all of you,
every single episode, 500 of them.
Now, is now what?
What areyou going to do as a result of this?
There's plenty of tactical ideasthat we've shared in the last 35 minutes.
(32:54):
And it's my hope that you don't just say,hey, that's good stuff, and then move on,
but rather to take action on at leastone of the things that you got here.
Because if you do that,
this will have beenfar more valuable for you than it would
just because you happened to listenand hopefully enjoy it.
It's that question. It'sthat question of action.
It's that question of decisionto take action that will make
(33:16):
all the difference for you, whether it'sthis podcast or anything else.
Mahesh, thank you so much for being here.
It's such a pleasureto have you. Likewise.
Thanks for having me.
So, everybody, hope you enjoyed it.
If you did,make sure you tell someone else.
And so they come join us.
And if you're not subscribedwherever you're listening to this from,
make sure you are subscribed
so you don't miss any future episodesof the Remarkable Leadership Podcast.
(33:39):
We'll see you all next week.
are you ready for some bad news?
As a leader,sometimes you have to deliver bad news.
Well, that's a hard truth. And doingit can be hard.
It is an important part of our job.
And that's why I'm excitedto be talking about that today
with my guest, who I will introduce to youin just a second.
Welcome to another episodeof the Remarkable Leadership Podcast,
where we are helping leaders like you growpersonally and professionally
(00:33):
to lead more effectivelyand make a bigger difference
for their teams,organization, organizations and the world.
If you are listening to this podcast,you could join us live in the future
for episodeson your favorite social media platform
and you can find out when thosewill happen and how you can join us
by connecting with us on our Facebookor LinkedIn groups.
(00:55):
Those aren't the only places that we go
live to live stream,but they're the most prevalent ones.
You can join usand learn more at remarkable
podcast.com/facebookor remarkable podcast.com/linkedin.
And if you'll do that, you'll know whenwe're going live and then you can join us.
Today's episode is brought to youby my latest book, Flexible
(01:15):
Leadership Navigate Uncertaintyand Lead with Confidence.
It's timeto realize that styles can get in our way,
and that following our strengthsmight not always be the best approach
in a worldmore complex and uncertain than ever.
Leaders need a new perspective,a new set of tools
in order to create the great resultsthat their teams and organizations need.
(01:36):
That'swhat flexible leadership can provide you.
You can learn more and order your copytoday at remarkable podcast.com/flexible.
And with thatI'm going to bring in my guest.
Now bring him back in.
There he is.
I'm going to introduce himand then we will dive in.
My guest today is Mahesh Guru Swami.
He is a seasoned productdevelopment executive
(01:59):
who has been in the softwaredevelopment space for over 20 years.
He's managedteams of varying sizes for over a decade.
He is currently the Chief Product
and Technology Officer at OfficerExcuse Me at Kickstarter.
Before that, he ran project developmentteams at Mosaic Kajabi and Smartsheet.
Smart sheet I don't think I said thatright the first time.
(02:22):
Mahesh caught the writing bugfrom his favorite author, Stephen King.
He started out writing short storiesand eventually discovered
that longform writing was a great mediumto share information
with product development teams.
We're going to talk a little bitmore about that.
All of that resulted in his new book, Howto Deliver Bad News and Get Away With It.
A Manager's Guide.
He is passionate about mentoring others,especially folks
(02:43):
who are especially interestedin becoming a people manager
and newer managerswho are just getting started.
Mahesh, thank you for joining me.
Oh, thanks for having me.
I was way too kind, Kevin.
Well, you know, I justI called your mom and got it.
So, listen, I'm so glad that you're here.
(03:04):
I love this book.
And we are going to talk about ita little bit.
And, and in the in the intro, I hinteda little bit at two as to how it came
to be that you as a product developmentexecutives started to do writing.
And we'll talk more about that too.
But really sort of what'swhat gets you to this place,
(03:24):
not just with the book,but you didn't when you were eight.
You didn't want to be.
I want to be a product developmentexecutive,
sort of like, tell us a little bitabout the backstory that leads here.
I talk about this a lot.
You know, both with my teams andand publicly to growing up,
I wasI would consider myself an average kid.
I, I didn't have any,
(03:47):
big ambitions
or any, you know, like,my son has got his 11 year old.
He has goals that he already has,like his future plan now.
And I was not like that at all.
I think the thing that
that activated something in meis, after I came to the States
to get my masters, I came to this day,it's about 20 some years ago.
(04:08):
And when I realized that corporate America
values throughput and bias for action
and getting stuff doneand taking ownership,
and that I,I realized that I had a lot of that in me.
So that activated something in me.
So when you see success,you kind of double down on it.
And that's what I did.
(04:29):
I kind of double down,double down, double down. And
I think
the, you know, like you mentioned in yourintroduction about your book, right?
It's it's not so much about, you know,following your passion, like saying like,
follow what you're really good atand double down on that.
So when I was a developerlike 20 years ago,
everybody is like, yeah,you're really good at getting stuff done.
(04:50):
So I double down on that.
When I became a manager.
The feedback that I got was,you're really good at getting people
to organize, and you're, you're ableto get the most out of people and teams.
And I sort of double down on thatwhen I first became an executive.
The feedback from my then-CEO boss was,you really understand
(05:10):
how businesses work and you were ableto, like, grow them or help them grow.
And I got double down on that.
I think my writing is my passion,is what I would say, but I wouldn't
consider writing as something that paysthe bills for, you know, per se, I.
Well, unless this bookbecomes atomic habits that.
(05:30):
I. That's right, that's right,that's right.
So I think I think like findingwhat I was good at, which is, you know,
aligning myself for output,aligning myself for getting stuff done,
and getting my teams to do the same thing
is, is what got mehere is what I would say.
I love that.
So, you talk at the beginning of the bookabout the fact that there's
(05:51):
a lot of books written about, like,why we should lead and a lot of,
like, sort of high andand big picture sorts of things.
Because you say that this book is kind ofabout the messy middle.
That's right.
The messy middle of leading.
And I said it in the intro that, you know,
we as a leader,we're going to have to deliver, difficult
messages, messages that we don't wantto necessarily live or bad news.
(06:13):
We can call it lots of things andyou call it lots of things in the book.
I think the first place to start,and it's actually
where you start in the book as well, is
how do you decide when to deliver it?
Because there's there's a decisionthat we have to make about,
sharing or withholding like and,and when to share,
(06:35):
when to withhold and how longand all those sorts of things.
I think that's an important decisionpoint.
I'm curious, from your perspective,
what are the flags?
What are the triggers for for you,for you to say, hey, I can't put this off.
I can't ignore this.
I need to deliver this message.
How do you go about.
(06:56):
I think it really dependson the situation, but, few,
kind of tricks that I use, or
I like tricks that I use is,
you know, there's, like,a small part of your brain goes, you know,
something is wrong.
You shouldyou should, like, intervene here.
So for the longest time, I wouldhow can I ignore that voice?
(07:17):
Because it's like,you know, things don't seem that bad.
Maybe things will recover on their own.
Maybe teams will figure out
how to get this sort of deadlines,like pull back in, etc..
But as I got older,I got more experience in this role.
The the reality is you,
that is the small voice in the back ofyour head is your intuition,
which is which is kind of seeingall these situations play out in the past
(07:41):
and is now giving you the early warningthat something might be,
might be happening.
The approach that I use is raising thethe temperature slowly.
So when a project is behind, for example,that's a really, really good moment
for leaders to intervene and find out I'msorry when it's not going well.
When a project islike behind on its timelines,
(08:03):
is the moment when
leaders are expected to interveneand find out what's going on.
I almost always kind of raisethe temperature slowly.
So in the first meeting I was like,hey, the hey team,
you committed this to be done last weekor in the week after.
What's what's going on?
And almost always when I use as have
a casual low temperaturepoking and prodding teams will.
(08:25):
Yeah. You know, we've this happened.
So we know we have accommodatedfor that now and we're back on track.
Same goes for people too.
If people are not hitting
their commitments for conversationis almost always casual because,
you know, people are not infalliblelike they have personal lives going on.
They have,
you know,they could be dealing with health issues,
they could be dealing
with personal problems at home,or could be it could be whatever.
(08:48):
Right.
So in the first conversation, I'll alwaystry to understand what's going on.
The second conversation is slightlyhigher temperature and say, hey,
things haven't recovered.
What are wewhat can we do to get this back on track?
And the third conversation is almostalways the the messy bit, which is,
okay, this is you know,this is when you have to use one of
these words is unacceptableor this is not great
(09:12):
or you know, we have to like, recoverquickly, etc., etc..
So the key is like like revising.
Revise it like increase temperatureslowly is what I would say.
And usually it is
two buckets of
situations I one is projects becominggetting behind where you have to intervene
and the, the other one is somebodycomplaining about one of your people.
(09:36):
And almost always like managershave this tendency
to be very protective of their team.
And they should bethey should be protective of the team.
They should protect them from,
from that kind of like whatever,like others might say about them.
But if a peer or a,
another individual on a different teamor somebody on your team is complaining
about someone,you as a leader has to react to that
(09:58):
you can't ignore and hopehoping that the problem would go away.
It won't.
Yeah, it's unlikely to go away on its ownin that case.
You just talked a little bit about,And I love that point.
Like, listen to that voice,listen that intuition.
And don't don't,
don't put it on pause and don't ignore it.
Right. I think that's really good advice.
(10:20):
So now you've started talk a little bitabout this idea of preparing to deliver
it. And I love this conversationabout what temperature am I going to use.
And I'm going to turn upthe temperature slowly.
I'm going to do that intentionally.
Is there ever a time when you
don't start at casual,
like when you've got to bump upthe temperature faster or,
(10:43):
you know,
you like my wife does on the stovesometimes, like start out on high, like,
is there ever a time that you do thator what's your advice around that?
I think the itit really kind of depends on the end,
outcome or goal you're driving towards.
So for example, if you have I'mjust making a hypothetical example.
(11:04):
Right.
So let's say your, your, your working onan, on a Super Bowl ad, Super Bowl day.
It's not going to change.Right. It's there.
No chance.
It's no. Change.
Nobody's going to change the date for you.
So and every day is going to be importantas you march towards that date
and even a day or two of,
(11:26):
delays will impact everythingin the, in the, in the pipeline.
So those are moments where I would raisethe temperature immediately.
I think for me, in my role,if we're made a big commitment
to a big customer, you know, that is,you know, and if we have tied,
marketing events together, thenthat's a day that we can't miss, right?
(11:48):
So we have to, like,deliver on time. So that's one,
example where you would, like, immediatelyraise the temperature
and your team should knowor you should share with the team
why you're raising the temperatureimmediately.
Because you can change the Super Bowl.
So you have to, like,deliver this thing on time.
So what can we doto get this back on track.
So that's number one.
And hopefully that won't bea surprise to them like they should.
(12:10):
Or that date isn't movable. Right.
And that's right. So hopefully
because what I love about your point,your point of this whole
idea of the temperature is thatI want to send the message in a way
that that I'm engaging the teamin the solution.
That's right.
What you're saying here isI don't have any choice.
And hopefully they understandthat they may not love the message,
(12:33):
but they at least understand the message.
That's right, that's right, that's right.
The the other category of situationswhere I have increased the temperature
quickly is, ethical
air policy violation type, type deals.
Right.
So if, if an employee comes to meand says, I been harassed,
then I do have like react to itvery quickly and very appropriately.
(12:57):
So situationslike those are another categories of,
of things where I expect leadersto immediately like,
you know, raise the temperature.
Yeah, I love that.And that's that's exactly right.
So you talk it there's a chapter.
I mean, we've already outlinedthe fact that you've determined
that you like to write and that youclearly have some skill in writing.
(13:17):
I'm talking with Mahesh, who were Swami,the author of the new book,
How to Deliver Bad Newsand Get Away With It.
So we know that you can write,and you, you make a comment.
What's a chapter really?
But you make a comment about the factthat sometimes the best way to deliver
the news, good or bad, is in writing.
And so I would say that's it. For me.
(13:40):
That's a yes.
And but I'd love for you to talk about theyes part.
Yeah. Yeah.
Why do you say that?
Because I think there's we could have it.
We could have thathave a healthy dialog about it.
And yet I understandthe point you're making.
So so share with us that.
Yeah it's it's definitely.
Yes. And and I'll explain my. Yes.
This is something I learned and Amazon
and Amazon is a very data detailoriented company.
(14:04):
So everything that they do,
is centered around the detailsof what they're talking about.
So when I first startedmeeting at Amazon, I said,
I wasreporting that a project is like behind.
So I was reporting to my bossthat the project is behind.
I said the project.
So I kind of said it, verbally
in a meeting that the project is behind.
(14:26):
So the next question was why is it behind?
So then I had to. Logical.
Which is. Like price to get directly.
Exactly.
So and then I thinkand then I had to like to think about it
in the moment and say,oh, this is why it's behind.
And then they're like,okay, what are you doing about it?
So what is a new day?
And so for me, it is when you'redelivering some of these brand new pieces
(14:47):
of information, I just encourage peopleto have a script around it.
So if you are delivering deliveringa status update, you write the status
update down, send it to your boss,and then you like give a voiceover.
If you do your writing correctly,then you don't even need a voiceover.
You can just tackle the questionsthat are going to come out of it.
And the my objective after likemy time on Amazon was whenever I
(15:12):
whenever I deliver information to people,which is somewhat controversial
or somewhat, you know, imperfect.
You know, I go for having all the detailsready and written down
and then go have the conversation,you know, with, with people.
Having said that, I'm not I am by no meansI'm perfect, but giving your brain
a chance to think throughthe narrative is important because,
(15:37):
if I like if we are living in a world
where attention spans are minuscule, so.
And we have, accidentallytrained ourselves to respond and react
in soundbites, which is so terrible forfor the professional world in general.
Right. Like, we there's so much nuancein what everybody does.
There's so much,
(15:58):
missing context and detailsand all the big decisions
people, companiesand governments are making.
So I kind of deliberately,go the other way.
I want to, like,hold on to the to the critical
thinking part of my brain, which is like,okay, you said this statement.
Why are you saying this statement? Like,what does it mean?
What are the aftermath?
What what's the next steps?
(16:20):
So I encourage people to, which is why,like one of the things I write in
the book isI don't like slide decks at all
because the surface area of a slidedeck is very limited.
So you resort to putting bullet pointsand you provide voiceovers.
But what are the chancesthat you can remember all the notes
for yourself in the voiceover?
Chances are you you won't.
So which is why when I do reviews withmy team, it's almost always a document.
(16:44):
So everybody writes a narrativeabout what is going on in the world.
We pre-read the document,or we read the document in the meeting
and we discuss the comments.
Which is an Amazon approach, which is.
The Amazon approach. Yeah.
So you tell anotherstory and I'm going to take an aside
because I think that you share an example
(17:05):
that helpsyou get to the point about the writing.
That I think is incredibly useful.
And it's kind of it's almost offtopic. Right.
I mean, it's incredibly importantthat you're nodding your head.
I think you know where I'm headed,but this isn't a book report.
So let me play this out.
Like you,
you shared some informationwith your team,
some really important informationwith your team.
And when you were done,
(17:27):
you expected a result that you didn'tget a response that you didn't get.
And then you didsomething really important.
You went backand watched the recording of this.
Right.
And so I just want to tell everybodythat, like,
for all of the things that people sayabout,
well, I mean, we have meetings in person,it's better and all that stuff.
(17:47):
And of course, there's lots of reasonsthat that can be true.
And yet many of our meetings are recorded,
and most of us,probably at some point in our life,
took a course on public speakingwhere video played
a huge role in our ability to get betteror at least be aware.
And yet we're not doing that.
So a little bit about because reallywhat I'm trying to do is raise up your,
(18:11):
your example as somethingthat we have access to and aren't doing.
So you want to say more about that?Both. Yeah.
And then anything you want to add towhat I just said.
I think the one big thing that I would addto what you just said,
as leaders progressing their careers,
the more important their words become.
(18:33):
So you might not realize it as a leader,
but your team will latch onto every single word you use
when you're talking about a specific topicor a specific,
in or in a specific meeting.
And I realize that over time isyou have to be very careful
and thoughtful about what you say.
And I made that, you know,
I made the mistake of saying the incorrectthings or the incomplete things.
(18:56):
Actually, the incomplete things arethe most common mistakes that managers
make, including myself, is in youryou set out to say X
and you say x -50%. Right.
So I think it's important if you want tobecome a well-rounded leader,
go look at your recordings
and find out how many timesyou said the wrong things,
(19:20):
how many times you used verbalgraffitis like ons, ums, etc.
you might not think it's a big deal,but it distracts
people from the message that you're tryingto deliver and ask people for feedback.
You know, my the
executive team at Kickstarter that I workwith is very open to giving feedback.
So I ask often, hey,how did I do in this meeting?
And they'll give me a scorecard,but that was a B plus.
(19:43):
That was a B minus, never an error becauseit means you're doing it really well.
And you had like stop learning, right?
So it's always a B minus or a B plus.
Well andso a b plus you feel pretty good about.
But that doesn't mean you're there. Right.That's right.
I love that.
I appreciate you sharing that.
And sort oflet me take a bit of an aside there.
I think the point that you made aboutthe higher we move in an organization,
(20:05):
the more our words matteris a really important point.
So those of you that are listening,that's sort of a mental highlight to me.
I think of one of the things thatthat I hope that you take from this,
throughout the book,you talk about delivering messages
to stakeholders,to your boss, lots of other things.
And yet one of the places where
I think everyone,if they say I've got to deliver bad news,
(20:27):
one of the things that comes into our mindis like a performance review, corrective
feedback in a situation or whomeverthat might be boss or otherwise.
But usually we're probably thinkingof someone that reports to us or design
team or whatever.
So what advice doyou have for us around that?
I think the,
the, the one, the biggest piece of advicethat I would want to give out
(20:51):
is the HR way of doing
things is one aspect of this conversation.
There's also the human sideof this equation that I encourage
people to not forget.
And what I mean bythat is the underlying assumption
that I make with any anybody that I workwith is these are these are people.
(21:12):
They're not robots. They're not numbers.
That's a really good assumption.Mahesh. Right.
They're they're all likethey're real people with with ambitions,
careers, families, lives, emotions,dreams, aspirations, etc..
Right. That's number one.
It's kind of changesthe way you approach conversations.
Number two is I like to believeand I could be wrong here,
(21:33):
but I, I like to believethe 99.9% of the professional world
is really good at what they do,but then it might not be good at,
good for thecompany or for the role that they're in.
So when somebody exits my teamor I had like let somebody go,
most of the time they're not a good fitfor the role or the company.
(21:53):
They're, they're, they're adand I share that with them that,
hey, this doesn't meanthat you will not be successful elsewhere.
And the professional world is very large.
And, I like to believe that if you are,if you have the education,
you have the qualifications,you have the experience,
you can be successful elsewhere.
So people who I'd like let go from Amazonended up becoming successful at Google.
(22:15):
People who I let go from Smartsheetended up becoming successful at meta.
Like all these things are possible,and I share that with people very openly.
And sometimes I even reach back outafter the conversation and ask them,
hey, do you can I help outwith introductions or or whatever?
And the and the and the last thingI'll say is one of the things that
(22:36):
that managers accidentallyfall into the trap that they fall into
is convincing themselves themselvesto dislike the other person,
the personwho's receiving the poor feedback.
And that is a trap that I encourage peoplenot to fall into
because your your mind is
automatically wired to deliver bad newswhen you're angry and upset.
(22:59):
And I encourage managers and leadersto like, fight that temptation
because if you do it that way,then the other person will feel it.
And I know in the moment you might notthink anything about it, but longer term
it might have lasting damages to their dotheir confidence to all the things right.
If if anyone who's listening is a parentthat you've
(23:23):
you've done it and, and I mean well,I shouldn't say that I know I did,
and and
and no one, no one won in that moment.
That moment, I guess in a moment
I felt a little bit better,but was a clear message delivered?
Was the feedback accepted and applied?
No. It did I deliver it in a way that wasthat was helpful. No.
(23:45):
I mean, yeah, I'm with you 100%.
I'm so glad that you shared that.
You know, there's
there's another thingyou talk about in the book.
You most of the time, if you ask people,
are there two kinds of feedback?
They'll say, yep, positivefeedback and negative feedback.
And of course, it'sthere's nothing wrong with that answer.
You say there's twoother kinds of feedback.
What are they?
(24:07):
So this is this is when it comesto giving critical feedback.
I like to categorize them as technicalfeedback and adaptive feedback.
I can kind of pull those terms from,
from one of my favorite leadership books,which is called leadership on the line,
where they talk about technical changes,technical problems and adaptive problems.
So what I mean by that issometimes the feedback is straightforward
(24:29):
and it has a straightforward,way to fix it.
So for example, if I tell you,
you know, Kevin, in this report,you did this wrong.
The fix is easy.
Why do you go back and fix a reportand and that's it.
So that those kinds of feedback, I wouldcategorize them as technical feedback.
Adaptive feedback is harder to givebecause it challenges
(24:51):
what makes Kevin Kevin.
So for example, if I tell youyou're not inspirational enough,
or you're not motivationalenough, or you are rude or,
the team doesn't respond to youwell or you're not strategic enough,
those things like attackthe way you know, you operate,
you know, it's the way you're builtand the way I think that you hold true.
(25:12):
Whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
So so those kinds of feedback,I, I encourage people
to, to think hard about,
whether you want to give that feedbackor not directly because
there's often a situationwhen you have to give critical
feedback to your bosses, because that'swhere this shows up the most.
(25:32):
And I encourage if you're goingif you're going to give critical feedback
to your boss, I encourage you to do itin small doses for us
to see if your boss will respond to it.
Chances are your work or how they willrespond, or how bad, right?
That's right, that's right, that's right.
And I encourage people to do itduring peace times.
(25:52):
So when things are calmand things are quiet,
I encourage people to try it outwith their boss.
The other the flip side of it is,
you know, leaders are hiredfor a skill that they have.
And if the feedback you're giving
goes attacks that skill, chances are it'snot going to go well.
So, for example,
let's say you're working for a companyand the CEO is hired to
(26:13):
to turn around the companyand really, really wants to cut costs
because that's the waythey've been successful.
If you go tell them don't cut costs,it's just not going to work.
I think just that's the way they are.
So you just have to realizethat some pieces of feedback are easy
to act on, which is technical feedback,but others are harder to act on,
which are adaptive feedback.
(26:34):
I think that's a really useful,
distinction for all of us.
And I appreciate yousharing a little bit about that.
The other thingI want to take before we start to wrap
up, and I ask you a couple otherfinal things.
The very end and I hinted at this in thewhen I introduced you,
that you are passionateabout helping people figure out
if they my words now, if they really wantto be managers or leaders or not.
(26:58):
And you close the book with sort of a,
a, a series of questionsto help people think about that.
And obviouslypeople need to go get a copy of the book.
And when they do that, how to deliverbad news and get away with it.
You're going to getthat bonus as an appendix.
But but,
what are a couple things, for peoplethat are listening,
whether it's for themselves,if they're an aspiring leader
(27:20):
or for someone who's leadingand they're sort of wondering why,
why did how did I end up here?
What are a couple of sort of key thingsthat people ought to ask themselves?
Yeah,I think the biggest realization for me,
which is also in that quiz in the inthe end is can you,
define success for yourself internally
without needing any external validation?
(27:43):
Because one of the things I realizedas I grew
as a leader, as a as a manager,
the number of times people will tell youyou're doing a good job is going to reduce
and reduce or reduceeventually will become zero,
because your successis tied to the success of the company.
So if you're an individual contributorand you're used to being validated
through your boss or through your peers,or if everybody is telling you
(28:07):
you're doing a good joband that's how you drive in drive,
derive your sort of internal motivationand validation,
then you'll have a tough timebecoming a manager.
So that's one thing that I encourage,
people to think through is believe survivewithout validation
for extended periods of time,because whatever you do as a manager
is like a long game, like, you know,you know, doing things for one day
(28:29):
today, weeks, months.
It's like sometimes years before youfind out whether you're successful or not.
So that's number one.
And number two is can you comfortably
step out of the limelightand give the spotlight to somebody else?
Because, the success of my organization,the success of the tech team
at Kickstarter is 100%the credit goes to the team who works
(28:50):
on the productsand features and services, etc.
so can you step away from the limelightand give the spotlight to somebody else?
It's very, very hard for you and sometimesexperienced professionals to do.
So if you find yourself asking for,
you know, creditor praise often in your current job,
then you're going to have a tough timeas a as a leader.
(29:13):
Yeah, I love that second onebecause I think everyone who's listening
has seen that boss or had that boss.
That's right.
Step out of the limelight.
And I'm guessing that everyonewho has seen or heard that boss does not
necessarilyhave a positive feeling about that moment.
So we want to I always say we can learnfrom any leader, including what not to do.
(29:35):
That's right.
That's what not to do.
That's right. All those things not to do.
Is there anything that we didn'ttalk about
or thatI didn't ask that you wish I would have?
No, I would want to, like,
close with by saying that,even though management is messy.
But I don't want to discourage peoplefrom stepping into that role
because it can be incredibly rewardingto win through your teams
(29:58):
because you're not just affectingthe company, you're
not just affecting the customers,the company you're serving,
but also the lives and careers of thethe people on your team,
which could be incredibly rewardingif you look at it the right way
and understand, the messy middlebefore you get into it.
I absolutely agree 100%.
(30:21):
I've got a couple of other questionsthat I want to ask before we go.
And the first one isso when you're not doing all this
great work and delivering all thisnews, what do you do for fun?
I like to read a lot.
That's kind of what I do on the side.
Read and write a lot.
And also, you know, the being in executiveroles is is stressful.
(30:44):
So the way that I, I kind of removethe stress is, is run outside.
So I kind of like, try to get outsideand get a good jog in once in a while.
So reading, writing and runningis what I would say I like doing.
All right.
So if we have had a chance to chatahead, I would have told you
this question was coming.
So I learned.
By the way, I forgot to say thisat the beginning, everybody,
(31:07):
this conversation that Mahesh and I arehaving is the 500th episode.
Oh, what?
This show and what I learned, I usuallyI tell people this before we start,
what I learned everybody a long time agois this next question I'm going to ask
if you've listened to long time,you know what I'm going to ask?
Mahesh doesn't know.
I learned a long time agoI'm better off asking this question ahead.
(31:27):
So I'm going to askanyway because I want to know.
But I don't.
I hope it doesn'tput you too much on the spot.
Manish, I want to know, what you'rereading these days.
No surprise.
I'm readingStephen King's new book, Never Flinch.
Awesome.
So, you know, the reasonthat I learned a long time ago
(31:49):
is sometimes I'd ask people in their eyesget why they can't remember a title.
They want to golook at their Kindle or whatever.
I'm so glad that you could go right to it.
We will have never flinched.
The link to that in the show notes,as well as a link to Mahesh in his book,
How to Deliver Bad Newsand Get Away with It A Manager's Guide.
And before we go, what is it that.
(32:09):
How do you want to whatwe're doing to point people?
Is there anything you want to tell peopleabout connecting with you?
Anything at allthat you want to share before we wrap up?
Yeah.
So you can find me on my Guru swami.comor on LinkedIn, where I'm pretty active.
If you are a leader or an executive
and you need additional helpor need a sounding board, reach out to me.
The contact information is on my phone.
(32:31):
Become all right. It's there.
We'll have that in the show notes as well.
And now, everybody, before we say goodbye,the question I ask all of you,
every single episode, 500 of them.
Now, is now what?
What areyou going to do as a result of this?
There's plenty of tactical ideasthat we've shared in the last 35 minutes.
(32:54):
And it's my hope that you don't just say,hey, that's good stuff, and then move on,
but rather to take action on at leastone of the things that you got here.
Because if you do that,
this will have beenfar more valuable for you than it would
just because you happened to listenand hopefully enjoy it.
It's that question. It'sthat question of action.
It's that question of decisionto take action that will make
(33:16):
all the difference for you, whether it'sthis podcast or anything else.
Mahesh, thank you so much for being here.
It's such a pleasureto have you. Likewise.
Thanks for having me.
So, everybody, hope you enjoyed it.
If you did,make sure you tell someone else.
And so they come join us.
And if you're not subscribedwherever you're listening to this from,
make sure you are subscribed
so you don't miss any future episodesof the Remarkable Leadership Podcast.
(33:39):
We'll see you all next week.
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