The Remarkable Leadership Podcast

00:00:08:13 - 00:00:25:08
Kevin Eikenberry
are you ready for some bad news? As a leader, sometimes you have to deliver bad news. Well, that's a hard truth. And doing it can be hard. It is an important part of our job. And that's why I'm excited to be talking about that today with my guest, who I will introduce to you in just a second.

00:00:25:10 - 00:00:55:01
Kevin Eikenberry
Welcome to another episode of the Remarkable Leadership Podcast, where we are helping leaders like you grow personally and professionally to lead more effectively and 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 episodes on your favorite social media platform and you can find out when those will happen and how you can join us by connecting with us on our Facebook or LinkedIn groups.

00:00:55:03 - 00:01:18:08
Kevin Eikenberry
Those aren't the only places that we go live to live stream, but they're the most prevalent ones. You can join us and learn more at remarkable podcast.com/facebook or remarkable podcast.com/linkedin. And if you'll do that, you'll know when we're going live and then you can join us. Today's episode is brought to you by my latest book, Flexible Leadership Navigate Uncertainty and Lead with Confidence.

00:01:18:10 - 00:01:38:13
Kevin Eikenberry
It's time to realize that styles can get in our way, and that following our strengths might not always be the best approach in a world more complex and uncertain than ever. Leaders need a new perspective, a new set of tools in order to create the great results that their teams and organizations need. That's what flexible leadership can provide you.

00:01:38:15 - 00:02:02:05
Kevin Eikenberry
You can learn more and order your copy today at remarkable podcast.com/flexible. And with that I'm going to bring in my guest. Now bring him back in. There he is. I'm going to introduce him and then we will dive in. My guest today is Mahesh Guru Swami. He is a seasoned product development executive who has been in the software development space for over 20 years.

00:02:02:07 - 00:02:32:17
Kevin Eikenberry
He's managed teams of varying sizes for over a decade. He is currently the Chief Product and Technology Officer at Officer Excuse Me at Kickstarter. Before that, he ran project development teams at Mosaic Kajabi and Smartsheet. Smart sheet I don't think I said that right the first time. Mahesh caught the writing bug from his favorite author, Stephen King. He started out writing short stories and eventually discovered that longform writing was a great medium to share information with product development teams.

00:02:32:18 - 00:02:52:04
Kevin Eikenberry
We're going to talk a little bit more about that. All of that resulted in his new book, How to Deliver Bad News and Get Away With It. A Manager's Guide. He is passionate about mentoring others, especially folks who are especially interested in becoming a people manager and newer managers who are just getting started. Mahesh, thank you for joining me.

00:02:52:06 - 00:02:55:02
Mahesh Guruswamy
Oh, thanks for having me. I was way too kind, Kevin.

00:02:55:04 - 00:03:02:14
Kevin Eikenberry
Well, you know, I just I called your mom and got it.

00:03:02:16 - 00:03:20:23
Kevin Eikenberry
So, listen, I'm so glad that you're here. I love this book. And we are going to talk about it a little bit. And, and in the in the intro, I hinted a little bit at two as to how it came to be that you as a product development executives started to do writing. And we'll talk more about that too.

00:03:21:00 - 00:03:34:03
Kevin Eikenberry
But really sort of what's what gets you to this place, 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 development executive, sort of like, tell us a little bit about the backstory that leads here.

00:03:34:05 - 00:03:55:07
Mahesh Guruswamy
I talk about this a lot. You know, both with my teams and and publicly to growing up, I was I would consider myself an average kid. I, I didn't have any, 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.

00:03:55:07 - 00:04:22:19
Mahesh Guruswamy
And I was not like that at all. I think the thing that that activated something in me is, after I came to the States to get my masters, I came to this day, it's about 20 some years ago. And when I realized that corporate America values throughput and bias for action and getting stuff done and taking ownership, and that I, I realized that I had a lot of that in me.

00:04:22:21 - 00:04:44:17
Mahesh Guruswamy
So that activated something in me. So when you see success, you kind of double down on it. And that's what I did. I kind of double down, double down, double down. And I think the, you know, like you mentioned in your introduction 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 at and double down on that.

00:04:44:19 - 00:05:06:09
Mahesh Guruswamy
So when I was a developer like 20 years ago, everybody is like, yeah, you're really good at getting stuff done. 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 able to get the most out of people and teams. And I sort of double down on that when I first became an executive.

00:05:06:11 - 00:05:25:12
Mahesh Guruswamy
The feedback from my then-CEO boss was, you really understand how businesses work and you were able to, 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 pays the bills for, you know, per se, I.

00:05:25:14 - 00:05:30:11
Kevin Eikenberry
Well, unless this book becomes atomic habits that.

00:05:30:13 - 00:05:46:15
Mahesh Guruswamy
I. That's right, that's right, that's right. So I think I think like finding what 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 me here is what I would say.

00:05:46:17 - 00:06:03:02
Kevin Eikenberry
I love that. So, you talk at the beginning of the book about the fact that there's a lot of books written about, like, why we should lead and a lot of, like, sort of high and and big picture sorts of things. Because you say that this book is kind of about the messy middle. That's right. The messy middle of leading.

00:06:03:02 - 00:06:24:14
Kevin Eikenberry
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 want to necessarily live or bad news. We can call it lots of things and you 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?

00:06:24:14 - 00:06:50:09
Kevin Eikenberry
Because there's there's a decision that we have to make about, sharing or withholding like and, and when to share, when to withhold and how long and all those sorts of things. I think that's an important decision point. 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.

00:06:50:11 - 00:06:55:18
Kevin Eikenberry
I can't ignore this. I need to deliver this message. How do you go about.

00:06:55:20 - 00:07:17:00
Mahesh Guruswamy
I think it really depends on 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 should you should, like, intervene here. So for the longest time, I would how can I ignore that voice?

00:07:17:00 - 00:07:46:03
Mahesh Guruswamy
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 of your head is your intuition, which is which is kind of seeing all these situations play out in the past and is now giving you the early warning that something might be, might be happening.

00:07:46:05 - 00:08:06:10
Mahesh Guruswamy
The approach that I use is raising the the 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'm sorry when it's not going well. When a project is like behind on its timelines, is the moment when leaders are expected to intervene and find out what's going on.

00:08:06:12 - 00:08:27:01
Mahesh Guruswamy
I almost always kind of raise the temperature slowly. So in the first meeting I was like, hey, the hey team, you committed this to be done last week or in the week after. What's what's going on? And almost always when I use as have a casual low temperature poking and prodding teams will. Yeah. You know, we've this happened.

00:08:27:03 - 00:08:48:04
Mahesh Guruswamy
So we know we have accommodated for that now and we're back on track. Same goes for people too. If people are not hitting their commitments for conversation is almost always casual because, you know, people are not infallible like 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.

00:08:48:04 - 00:09:16:03
Mahesh Guruswamy
Right. So in the first conversation, I'll always try to understand what's going on. The second conversation is slightly higher temperature and say, hey, things haven't recovered. What are we what can we do to get this back on track? And the third conversation is almost always the the messy bit, which is, okay, this is you know, this is when you have to use one of these words is unacceptable or this is not great or you know, we have to like, recover quickly, etc., etc..

00:09:16:05 - 00:09:39:19
Mahesh Guruswamy
So the key is like like revising. Revise it like increase temperature slowly is what I would say. And usually it is two buckets of situations I one is projects becoming getting behind where you have to intervene and the, the other one is somebody complaining about one of your people. And almost always like managers have this tendency to be very protective of their team.

00:09:39:19 - 00:10:01:06
Mahesh Guruswamy
And they should be they 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 team or somebody on your team is complaining about someone, you as a leader has to react to that you can't ignore and hope hoping that the problem would go away.

00:10:01:08 - 00:10:03:06
Mahesh Guruswamy
It won't.

00:10:03:08 - 00:10:24:04
Kevin Eikenberry
Yeah, it's unlikely to go away on its own in 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. So now you've started talk a little bit about this idea of preparing to deliver it.

00:10:24:04 - 00:10:52:03
Kevin Eikenberry
And I love this conversation about what temperature am I going to use. And I'm going to turn up the 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 up the temperature faster or, you know, you like my wife does on the stove sometimes, like start out on high, like, is there ever a time that you do that or what's your advice around that?

00:10:52:07 - 00:11:13:00
Mahesh Guruswamy
I think the it it really kind of depends on the end, outcome or goal you're driving towards. So for example, if you have I'm just making a hypothetical example. Right. So let's say your, your, your working on an, on a Super Bowl ad, Super Bowl day. It's not going to change. Right. It's there.

00:11:13:03 - 00:11:14:10
Kevin Eikenberry
No chance. It's no.

00:11:14:10 - 00:11:48:04
Mahesh Guruswamy
Change. Nobody's going to change the date for you. So and every day is going to be important as you march towards that date and even a day or two of, delays will impact everything in the, in the, in the pipeline. So those are moments where I would raise the 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, then that's a day that we can't miss, right?

00:11:48:04 - 00:12:04:14
Mahesh Guruswamy
So we have to, like, deliver on time. So that's one, example where you would, like, immediately raise the temperature and your team should know or you should share with the team why you're raising the temperature immediately. Because you can change the Super Bowl. So you have to, like, deliver this thing on time. So what can we do to get this back on track.

00:12:04:14 - 00:12:05:18
Mahesh Guruswamy
So that's number one.

00:12:05:20 - 00:12:26:09
Kevin Eikenberry
And hopefully that won't be a surprise to them like they should. 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 that I want to send the message in a way that that I'm engaging the team in the solution. That's right.

00:12:26:09 - 00:12:34:09
Kevin Eikenberry
What you're saying here is I don't have any choice. And hopefully they understand that they may not love the message, but they at least understand the message.

00:12:34:09 - 00:13:04:06
Mahesh Guruswamy
That's right, that's right, that's right. The the other category of situations where I have increased the temperature quickly is, ethical air policy violation type, type deals. Right. So if, if an employee comes to me and says, I been harassed, then I do have like react to it very quickly and very appropriately. So situations like those are another categories of, of things where I expect leaders to immediately like, you know, raise the temperature.

00:13:04:08 - 00:13:23:02
Kevin Eikenberry
Yeah, I love that. And that's that's exactly right. So you talk it there's a chapter. I mean, we've already outlined the fact that you've determined that you like to write and that you clearly have some skill in writing. I'm talking with Mahesh, who were Swami, the author of the new book, How to Deliver Bad News and Get Away With It.

00:13:23:04 - 00:13:42:06
Kevin Eikenberry
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 fact that sometimes the best way to deliver the news, good or bad, is in writing. And so I would say that's it. For me. That's a yes. And but I'd love for you to talk about the yes part.

00:13:42:11 - 00:13:42:18
Mahesh Guruswamy
Yeah.

00:13:42:18 - 00:13:51:17
Kevin Eikenberry
Yeah. Why do you say that? Because I think there's we could have it. We could have that have a healthy dialog about it. And yet I understand the point you're making. So so share with us that.

00:13:51:23 - 00:14:16:05
Mahesh Guruswamy
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 detail oriented company. So everything that they do, is centered around the details of what they're talking about. So when I first started meeting at Amazon, I said, I was reporting that a project is like behind.

00:14:16:05 - 00:14:28:09
Mahesh Guruswamy
So I was reporting to my boss that the project is behind. I said the project. So I kind of said it, verbally in a meeting that the project is behind. So the next question was why is it behind? So then I had to.

00:14:28:09 - 00:14:28:22
Kevin Eikenberry
Logical.

00:14:29:00 - 00:14:29:12
Mahesh Guruswamy
Which is.

00:14:29:12 - 00:14:31:15
Kevin Eikenberry
Like price to get directly.

00:14:31:16 - 00:14:51:14
Mahesh Guruswamy
Exactly. So and then I think and 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're delivering some of these brand new pieces of information, I just encourage people to have a script around it.

00:14:51:16 - 00:15:18:12
Mahesh Guruswamy
So if you are delivering delivering a 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 questions that are going to come out of it. And the my objective after like my time on Amazon was whenever I whenever I deliver information to people, which is somewhat controversial or somewhat, you know, imperfect.

00:15:18:14 - 00:15:43:03
Mahesh Guruswamy
You know, I go for having all the details ready and written down and then go have the conversation, you know, with, with people. Having said that, I'm not I am by no means I'm perfect, but giving your brain a chance to think through the narrative is important because, if I like if we are living in a world where attention spans are minuscule, so.

00:15:43:03 - 00:16:06:15
Mahesh Guruswamy
And we have, accidentally trained ourselves to respond and react in soundbites, which is so terrible for for the professional world in general. Right. Like, we there's so much nuance in what everybody does. There's so much, missing context and details and all the big decisions people, companies and governments are making. So I kind of deliberately, go the other way.

00:16:06:15 - 00:16:29:11
Mahesh Guruswamy
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? So I encourage people to, which is why, like one of the things I write in the book is I don't like slide decks at all because the surface area of a slide deck is very limited.

00:16:29:11 - 00:16:47:15
Mahesh Guruswamy
So you resort to putting bullet points and you provide voiceovers. But what are the chances that 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 with my team, it's almost always a document. So everybody writes a narrative about what is going on in the world.

00:16:47:17 - 00:16:52:16
Mahesh Guruswamy
We pre-read the document, or we read the document in the meeting and we discuss the comments.

00:16:52:18 - 00:16:54:16
Kevin Eikenberry
Which is an Amazon approach, which is.

00:16:54:16 - 00:16:56:17
Mahesh Guruswamy
The Amazon approach. Yeah.

00:16:56:19 - 00:17:17:00
Kevin Eikenberry
So you tell another story and I'm going to take an aside because I think that you share an example that helps you get to the point about the writing. That I think is incredibly useful. And it's kind of it's almost off topic. Right. I mean, it's incredibly important that you're nodding your head. I think you know where I'm headed, but this isn't a book report.

00:17:17:03 - 00:17:46:18
Kevin Eikenberry
So let me play this out. Like you, you shared some information with your team, some really important information with your team. And when you were done, you expected a result that you didn't get a response that you didn't get. And then you did something really important. You went back and watched the recording of this. Right. And so I just want to tell everybody that, like, for all of the things that people say about, well, I mean, we have meetings in person, it's better and all that stuff.

00:17:46:18 - 00:18:16:09
Kevin Eikenberry
And of course, there's lots of reasons that 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 speaking where video played a huge role in our ability to get better or at least be aware. And yet we're not doing that. So a little bit about because really what I'm trying to do is raise up your, your example as something that we have access to and aren't doing.

00:18:16:09 - 00:18:20:17
Kevin Eikenberry
So you want to say more about that? Both. Yeah. And then anything you want to add to what I just said.

00:18:20:19 - 00:18:45:06
Mahesh Guruswamy
I think the one big thing that I would add to what you just said, as leaders progressing their careers, the more important their words become. So you might not realize it as a leader, but your team will latch on to every single word you use when you're talking about a specific topic or a specific, in or in a specific meeting.

00:18:45:08 - 00:19:06:07
Mahesh Guruswamy
And I realize that over time is you have to be very careful and thoughtful about what you say. And I made that, you know, I made the mistake of saying the incorrect things or the incomplete things. Actually, the incomplete things are the most common mistakes that managers make, including myself, is in your you set out to say X and you say x -50%.

00:19:06:09 - 00:19:30:06
Mahesh Guruswamy
Right. So I think it's important if you want to become a well-rounded leader, go look at your recordings and find out how many times you said the wrong things, how many times you used verbal graffitis like ons, ums, etc. you might not think it's a big deal, but it distracts people from the message that you're trying to deliver and ask people for feedback.

00:19:30:06 - 00:19:46:12
Mahesh Guruswamy
You know, my the executive team at Kickstarter that I work with 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. That was a B minus, never an error because it means you're doing it really well. And you had like stop learning, right?

00:19:46:12 - 00:19:50:10
Mahesh Guruswamy
So it's always a B minus or a B plus.

00:19:50:12 - 00:19:54:03
Kevin Eikenberry
Well and so a b plus you feel pretty good about. But that doesn't mean you're there.

00:19:54:03 - 00:19:55:10
Mahesh Guruswamy
Right. That's right.

00:19:55:12 - 00:20:10:11
Kevin Eikenberry
I love that. I appreciate you sharing that. And sort of let me take a bit of an aside there. I think the point that you made about the higher we move in an organization, the more our words matter is a really important point. So those of you that are listening, that's sort of a mental highlight to me.

00:20:10:11 - 00:20:34:22
Kevin Eikenberry
I think of one of the things that that 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, one of the things that comes into our mind is like a performance review, corrective feedback in a situation or whomever that might be boss or otherwise.

00:20:35:00 - 00:20:43:23
Kevin Eikenberry
But usually we're probably thinking of someone that reports to us or design team or whatever. So what advice do you have for us around that?

00:20:44:01 - 00:21:11:16
Mahesh Guruswamy
I think the, the, the one, the biggest piece of advice that I would want to give out is the HR way of doing things is one aspect of this conversation. There's also the human side of this equation that I encourage people to not forget. And what I mean by that is the underlying assumption that I make with any anybody that I work with is these are these are people.

00:21:11:17 - 00:21:14:08
Mahesh Guruswamy
They're not robots. They're not numbers.

00:21:14:09 - 00:21:16:05
Kevin Eikenberry
That's a really good assumption. Mahesh.

00:21:16:09 - 00:21:44:06
Mahesh Guruswamy
Right. They're they're all like they're real people with with ambitions, careers, families, lives, emotions, dreams, aspirations, etc.. Right. That's number one. It's kind of changes the way you approach conversations. Number two is I like to believe and I could be wrong here, but I, I like to believe the 99.9% of the professional world is really good at what they do, but then it might not be good at, good for the company or for the role that they're in.

00:21:44:08 - 00:22:09:22
Mahesh Guruswamy
So when somebody exits my team or I had like let somebody go, most of the time they're not a good fit for the role or the company. They're, they're, they're ad and I share that with them that, hey, this doesn't mean that 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.

00:22:09:22 - 00:22:31:00
Mahesh Guruswamy
So people who I'd like let go from Amazon ended up becoming successful at Google. People who I let go from Smartsheet ended 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 out after the conversation and ask them, hey, do you can I help out with introductions or or whatever?

00:22:31:02 - 00:22:58:01
Mahesh Guruswamy
And the and the and the last thing I'll say is one of the things that that managers accidentally fall into the trap that they fall into is convincing themselves themselves to dislike the other person, the person who's receiving the poor feedback. And that is a trap that I encourage people not to fall into because your your mind is automatically wired to deliver bad news when you're angry and upset.

00:22:58:03 - 00:23:16:19
Mahesh Guruswamy
And I encourage managers and leaders to 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 not think anything about it, but longer term it might have lasting damages to their do their confidence to all the things right.

00:23:16:21 - 00:23:38:23
Kevin Eikenberry
If if anyone who's listening is a parent that you've 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?

00:23:39:00 - 00:23:59:02
Kevin Eikenberry
No. It did I deliver it in a way that was that was helpful. No. I mean, yeah, I'm with you 100%. I'm so glad that you shared that. You know, there's there's another thing you talk about in the book. You most of the time, if you ask people, are there two kinds of feedback? They'll say, yep, positive feedback and negative feedback.

00:23:59:02 - 00:24:06:00
Kevin Eikenberry
And of course, it's there's nothing wrong with that answer. You say there's two other kinds of feedback. What are they?

00:24:06:02 - 00:24:31:19
Mahesh Guruswamy
So this is this is when it comes to giving critical feedback. I like to categorize them as technical feedback 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 is sometimes the feedback is straightforward and it has a straightforward, way to fix it.

00:24:31:21 - 00:24:52:01
Mahesh Guruswamy
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 report and and that's it. So that those kinds of feedback, I would categorize them as technical feedback. Adaptive feedback is harder to give because it challenges what makes Kevin Kevin.

00:24:52:03 - 00:25:10:23
Mahesh Guruswamy
So for example, if I tell you you're not inspirational enough, or you're not motivational enough, or you are rude or, the team doesn't respond to you well or you're not strategic enough, those things like attack the way you know, you operate, you know, it's the way you're built and the way I think that you hold true. Whatever.

00:25:10:23 - 00:25:42:12
Mahesh Guruswamy
Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So so those kinds of feedback, I, I encourage people to, to think hard about, whether you want to give that feedback or not directly because there's often a situation when you have to give critical feedback to your bosses, because that's where this shows up the most. And I encourage if you're going if you're going to give critical feedback to your boss, I encourage you to do it in small doses for us to see if your boss will respond to it.

00:25:42:14 - 00:25:47:17
Kevin Eikenberry
Chances are your work or how they will respond, or how bad, right?

00:25:47:19 - 00:26:07:07
Mahesh Guruswamy
That's right, that's right, that's right. And I encourage people to do it during peace times. So when things are calm and things are quiet, I encourage people to try it out with their boss. The other the flip side of it is, you know, leaders are hired for a skill that they have. And if the feedback you're giving goes attacks that skill, chances are it's not going to go well.

00:26:07:07 - 00:26:32:19
Mahesh Guruswamy
So, for example, let's say you're working for a company and the CEO is hired to to turn around the company and really, really wants to cut costs because that's the way they'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 realize that some pieces of feedback are easy to act on, which is technical feedback, but others are harder to act on, which are adaptive feedback.

00:26:32:21 - 00:26:56:12
Kevin Eikenberry
I think that's a really useful, distinction for all of us. And I appreciate you sharing a little bit about that. The other thing I want to take before we start to wrap up, and I ask you a couple other final things. The very end and I hinted at this in the when I introduced you, that you are passionate about helping people figure out if they my words now, if they really want to be managers or leaders or not.

00:26:56:14 - 00:27:23:04
Kevin Eikenberry
And you close the book with sort of a, a, a series of questions to help people think about that. And obviously people need to go get a copy of the book. And when they do that, how to deliver bad news and get away with it. You're going to get that bonus as an appendix. But but, what are a couple things, for people that are listening, whether it's for themselves, if they're an aspiring leader or for someone who's leading and they're sort of wondering why, why did how did I end up here?

00:27:23:06 - 00:27:27:21
Kevin Eikenberry
What are a couple of sort of key things that people ought to ask themselves?

00:27:27:23 - 00:27:56:14
Mahesh Guruswamy
Yeah, I think the biggest realization for me, which is also in that quiz in the in the end is can you, define success for yourself internally without needing any external validation? Because one of the things I realized as I grew as a leader, as a as a manager, the number of times people will tell you you're doing a good job is going to reduce and reduce or reduce eventually will become zero, because your success is tied to the success of the company.

00:27:56:16 - 00:28:28:12
Mahesh Guruswamy
So if you're an individual contributor and you're used to being validated through your boss or through your peers, or if everybody is telling you you're doing a good job and that's how you drive in drive, derive your sort of internal motivation and validation, then you'll have a tough time becoming a manager. So that's one thing that I encourage, people to think through is believe survive without 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 today, weeks, months.

00:28:28:12 - 00:28:55:16
Mahesh Guruswamy
It's like sometimes years before you find out whether you're successful or not. So that's number one. And number two is can you comfortably step out of the limelight and 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 on the products and features and services, etc. so can you step away from the limelight and give the spotlight to somebody else?

00:28:55:16 - 00:29:11:11
Mahesh Guruswamy
It's very, very hard for you and sometimes experienced professionals to do. So if you find yourself asking for, you know, credit or praise often in your current job, then you're going to have a tough time as a as a leader.

00:29:11:13 - 00:29:20:11
Kevin Eikenberry
Yeah, I love that second one because I think everyone who's listening has seen that boss or had that boss.

00:29:20:13 - 00:29:21:01
Mahesh Guruswamy
That's right.

00:29:21:03 - 00:29:33:06
Kevin Eikenberry
Step out of the limelight. And I'm guessing that everyone who has seen or heard that boss does not necessarily have a positive feeling about that moment. So we want to I always say we can learn from any leader, including what not to do.

00:29:33:08 - 00:29:34:02
Mahesh Guruswamy
That's right.

00:29:34:03 - 00:29:43:08
Kevin Eikenberry
That's what not to do. That's right. All those things not to do. Is there anything that we didn't talk about or that I didn't ask that you wish I would have?

00:29:43:10 - 00:30:14:15
Mahesh Guruswamy
No, I would want to, like, close with by saying that, even though management is messy. But I don't want to discourage people from stepping into that role because it can be incredibly rewarding to win through your teams because you're not just affecting the company, you're not just affecting the customers, the company you're serving, but also the lives and careers of the the people on your team, which could be incredibly rewarding if you look at it the right way and understand, the messy middle before you get into it.

00:30:14:17 - 00:30:31:08
Kevin Eikenberry
I absolutely agree 100%. I've got a couple of other questions that I want to ask before we go. And the first one is so when you're not doing all this great work and delivering all this news, what do you do for fun?

00:30:31:10 - 00:30:52:18
Mahesh Guruswamy
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 executive roles is is stressful. So the way that I, I kind of remove the stress is, is run outside. So I kind of like, try to get outside and get a good jog in once in a while.

00:30:52:18 - 00:30:56:03
Mahesh Guruswamy
So reading, writing and running is what I would say I like doing.

00:30:56:05 - 00:31:21:01
Kevin Eikenberry
All right. So if we have had a chance to chat ahead, I would have told you this question was coming. So I learned. By the way, I forgot to say this at the beginning, everybody, this conversation that Mahesh and I are having is the 500th episode. Oh, what? This show and what I learned, I usually I tell people this before we start, what I learned everybody a long time ago is this next question I'm going to ask if you've listened to long time, you know what I'm going to ask?

00:31:21:04 - 00:31:36:13
Kevin Eikenberry
Mahesh doesn't know. I learned a long time ago I'm better off asking this question ahead. So I'm going to ask anyway because I want to know. But I don't. I hope it doesn't put you too much on the spot. Manish, I want to know, what you're reading these days.

00:31:36:15 - 00:31:43:21
Mahesh Guruswamy
No surprise. I'm reading Stephen King's new book, Never Flinch.

00:31:43:23 - 00:32:04:03
Kevin Eikenberry
Awesome. So, you know, the reason that I learned a long time ago is sometimes I'd ask people in their eyes get why they can't remember a title. They want to go look 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 News and Get Away with It A Manager's Guide.

00:32:04:05 - 00:32:15:07
Kevin Eikenberry
And before we go, what is it that. How do you want to what we're doing to point people? Is there anything you want to tell people about connecting with you? Anything at all that you want to share before we wrap up?

00:32:15:09 - 00:32:29:12
Mahesh Guruswamy
Yeah. So you can find me on my Guru swami.com or on LinkedIn, where I'm pretty active. If you are a leader or an executive and you need additional help or need a sounding board, reach out to me. The contact information is on my phone.

00:32:29:12 - 00:32:51:21
Kevin Eikenberry
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 are you going to do as a result of this? There's plenty of tactical ideas that we've shared in the last 35 minutes.

00:32:52:01 - 00:33:09:15
Kevin Eikenberry
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 least one of the things that you got here. Because if you do that, this will have been far more valuable for you than it would just because you happened to listen and hopefully enjoy it. It's that question.

00:33:09:15 - 00:33:21:18
Kevin Eikenberry
It's that question of action. It's that question of decision to take action that will make all the difference for you, whether it's this podcast or anything else. Mahesh, thank you so much for being here. It's such a pleasure to have you.

00:33:21:20 - 00:33:23:09
Mahesh Guruswamy
Likewise. Thanks for having me.

00:33:23:11 - 00:33:38:15
Kevin Eikenberry
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 subscribed wherever you're listening to this from, make sure you are subscribed so you don't miss any future episodes of the Remarkable Leadership Podcast. We'll see you all next week.