Amazing Teams Podcast
We started this podcast because we love teams, especially amazing ones. Michael Jordan said it best, "Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships." This is what we're all about!
Our mission is to help others build amazing teams by having authentic conversations with remarkable people who are building amazing teams. We will explore the tactics, strategies, and frameworks that have helped them succeed.
Amazing Teams Podcast
“Say the Thing”: Claire Lew on Leading with Clarity
In this episode of the Amazing Teams podcast, we sat down with Claire Lew, CEO adn founder of Canopy (formerly Know Your Team), to explore the evolving role of managers and the growing need for leadership development. She discusses the challenges of navigating uncertainty, maintaining morale, and giving honest feedback, while emphasizing the need for clear communication and strong leadership in today’s complex, digital workplace.
We dive into:
- How clear, timely feedback builds stronger teams
- Why manager engagement drives morale and culture
- The challenges of growing into leadership
- What Canopy is doing differently.
Tune in for Claire’s insights on building stronger teams through thoughtful leadership and clear communication.
Resources:
- Connect with Claire on LinkedIn
- Learn more about Canopy.is
- Follow Claire on Substack
Claire Lew (00:02.254)
So a leader will tell, let's say I have a direct report, right? And I'll say the direct report. I need you to step up. Let's just pause on that. What does that mean, actually? It could mean, yeah, I want you to be more proactive in meetings. It could mean I want you to be more prepared. It could mean like literally thousands of permutations of a thing.
Doug Dosberg
This podcast is brought to you by Hey Taco, the only peer-to-peer recognition platform that uses tacos to help teams around the world share gratitude. I'm Doug. I’m Una. This is our podcast, Amazing Teams.
Doug Dosberg (00:45.454)
Hey everyone, welcome to Season Three of the Amazing Teams podcast, where we explore all the things that make work better. Today, we are excited to be joined by Claire Lew, CEO of Canopy. Claire, welcome to the Amazing Teams podcast.
Claire Lew
Thanks for having me, Doug and Una.
Doug Dosberg
Of course. Claire, tell us about Canopy.
Claire Lew (01:05.824)
We are a leadership development company, and we help give leaders a space to truly grow and lead their teams in the best way possible. And we have two ways in which we do that. We have custom leadership development programs and workshops, services, coaching, and advising. And then we also have an online platform where people can learn from.
Una Japundza
Claire, how long has Canopy been around?
Claire Lew
Oh man! We're either really old or really young, I think, depending on who you talk to. So we've been around, yeah, for the past decade. And the origin of it is really in my own personal experience. So over a decade ago, I was working at a company, and I'd started a company before that, but I was working now for someone. It was the first time that had happened.
And I don't know if you will relate to this. Doug, and maybe you too, Una, you know this feeling of, you're working and you're like, wait a second. Hmm. I don't know if I really understand, you know, why all these changes are being made, or hmm, I think that's kind of interesting. And I feel like the, you know, boss is sort of like showing a lot of favoritism or hmm, I feel like the direction is changing all the time. And you just start to notice all these things are ways that you feel like the company could be better.
And you start maybe talking to some of your peers, and you realize, they're noticing the same things too. And a lot of folks aren't unhappy. And in this process, my sort of biggest kind of, I think like startling moment was, oh wow, we're thinking all of these things as a team, but the CEO actually has no idea that this is what his team is thinking.
Claire Lew (02:54.446)
And so it's unfortunately going all under the radar. And I remember as an employee thinking, I think I would want to know if I was the founder, but also as an employee, I was thinking, I don't really know how to share this. And you have to remember this is over a decade ago. So this is before sort of performance management or performance reviews or feedback surveys were even the norm, right?
It was just kind of like, I don't know, not a thing. So I was like, you know, this is crazy because also the company, we're not talking about a big company, we're talking about a company that was like 10 people, really small. So was like, gosh, if this is happening in a 10-person company, can you imagine with a hundred people or a thousand people? And I just realized that, fundamentally that I bet I had a hunch that the CEO would want to know their company better, but just didn't know how.
And as an employee felt like, well, I think my experience would benefit from also the CEO knowing the company better. So long story short, I end up deciding, you know what, this is, I think a problem that I think affects a lot of people and more than that, it's so personally painful, like it's driving me so crazy, that I'm going to do sort of whatever it takes to solve it. So I studied learning and organizational change when I was in college, I'd, you know, I'd started a company before. I had done some research, I worked at a VC firm, and done some research around the space of feedback as well. And so I knew there was literature out there. knew there were kinds of frameworks around there. knew that you could start a company to try to solve different problems.
So I just decided, you know what, that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to quit my job. Didn't know what company I was going to start, but I was like, I don't, don't really know what it is. I don't know if I really care, you know, what it ends up becoming, but I just want to solve this problem. And I just want to make this my life's work. So that was the beginning of it all.
Una Japundza
And is that the beginning of Know Your Team?
Claire Lew (04:51.564)
Yeah, well, so in the beginning, I started off first, actually building a consulting practice. So a lot of the services that we offer today have its roots in those really early days. And so would go and help CEOs and founders get to know their company better, get to see their company better. Hilariously enough, the company at the time was called Clarity Box. I guess…
Doug Dosberg
Love it.
Una Japundza
Pun intended.
Claire Lew
… it was cute at the time. Maybe still is. Who knows? We'll roll with it.
And my first official client was a company that I think both of you are aware of, called Basecamp or 37signals today. So I had happened to meet their CEO and founder, Jason Fried, and shared with him what I was working on. And he was like, I actually would like to know my company better. Claire, can you come in and do a project?
So I ended up doing some consulting work with them, and it ended up being super helpful. And then the other wild thing is they actually internally had been building their own tool. And it was a tool that was essentially just like the earliest and simplest form of a feedback survey, but it was really thoughtful. It was really pointed. They already had a bunch of customers, and Jason then approached me like maybe like six months after I'd wrapped up the project. And he was like, Claire, I... You know, we have this tool that we built, and honestly, it's making quite a bit of money. There's some good customers on here, you know. I don't really know what to do with it. So I have this crazy idea. What if we actually spun out the tool to be its own separate company?
Doug Dosberg
Was that High Rise or Campfire?
Claire Lew
No. That was Know Your Team.
Doug Dosberg
That was Know Your Team.
Claire Lew (06:30.958)
What was then, Know Your Company.
Doug Dosberg
Okay.
Claire Lew
Yep. It is Canopy. And so I came on board. I, um, it was just me in the beginning, and gave me all the code and the client list, and they're like, All right, go for it.
Una Japundza
Good luck!
Claire Lew
Yeah, good luck. Um, and so, yeah, so since then, you know, we were, um, formally Know Your Company, where we really focused on helping CEOs get feedback. We…
Claire Lew (07:00.632)
… built out the product to be Know Your Team, which includes things like better one-on-one meetings and status updates, and more managerial tools. But throughout this whole process, the biggest thing that people would ask for is, hey, I just want help actually leading my team. And so we got asked to do more consulting things, more speaking, more workshops, more training, more coaching, more advising. And so we ended up building a platform for that piece, too, which is our Canopy app. And then we sell services as well for that. So.
Doug Dosberg
That's awesome. I'm just so curious, like, how did you end up connecting with Jason? Did he find you? Did you find him? What does that look like?
Claire Lew
It's random. For the first company that I started right out of college, it was a beginner-focused software school. So a coding school. This is again, really early on, was like one of the, I think it was like maybe the first one in the country at the time. This is in Chicago. It was called Code Space Academy.
Doug Dosberg
Okay.
Claire Lew
So it may have even been around the same time or predates Codecademy. But long story short, my co-founder for that company had met Jason very randomly. I think this is actually highly ironic. Many folks know, you may know, 37signals, one of their co-founders, David, is also the creator of Ruby on Rails. Their other co-founder is Jason. Jason, at the time, ironically, had actually never learned Ruby on Rails. So he had met my co-founder, Neal, Neal Sales-Griffin, in a Rails workshop…
Claire Lew (08:39.212)
…that Jason happened also to be taking, and they were sitting, like just really wild. But anyhwho. Huge fans, obviously, of 37signals and grateful so much for them, seeing something and wanting to work together, and a really beautiful partnership. Ten years plus.
Doug Dosberg
That's awesome.
Claire Lew
They're still a minority partner. They're the most supportive and hands off in the best way partners that you could ask for. And so, really grateful.
Doug Dosberg
That’s so cool.
Una Japundza
Claire, what type of companies do you work with now? Is there a profile of usually remote, tech, anything that you kind of noticed is your great niche?
Claire Lew
Yeah, I would say we do primarily work with high-growth, tech-oriented, sort of mid-sized companies. So some people would call them small companies, actually, again, it's just relative to what, and I would say about 120 people to about a thousand people is our sweet spot. But the main, you know, and my hypothesis for why that is, is because I think, you know, when you are a company in that size range, there's so much…
Claire Lew (09:50.19)
…change that's happening. So when you are smaller than that, there's absolutely change still happening, but it's to a level where there's not as much stratification of leadership levels. And so people are still kind of getting by on like a book club or doing nothing. And we're just kind of, you know, like leader people. And then they, you know, they start to add more and more people. And then all of a sudden you have like 10 managers who have, you know, five to 15 direct reports each, and you start realizing, everybody's kind of doing their own thing.
Like some people do one-on-one, some people don't. Some people have processes for how they give feedback. Some people aren't actually giving any feedback. Some people set goals this way, some people set goals in a totally different way. And so there's this whole lack of standardization. And then the other thing you realize is the way folks are sort of trying things is what we like to call like just like, well-intentioned leadership.
So just like, this feels good. I think I like read it. So like, just, I think, you know, I'm nice. Like it just feels, so I'm just going to kind of do like, they have the best of intentions, right? I don't want to rock the boat. And it ends up having some, unfortunately, sort of second and third-order consequences, right? Especially because with these newer folks and as the organization growing, they end up managing their former peers.
So it's, oh, wow. I'm leading a team for the first time. I'm trying to figure out how to get everyone to be excited about this project that no one's really excited about. And so I'm just going to say, that's OK for a while. And then I need to have a hard conversation, but I don't know how to do it. And that's when folks reach out to us.
Una Japundza
Or it sounds like I used to have beers with this person after work, but now I'm their boss, and I have to tell them that they're not getting a raise this year or something like that. How do I do that? We were buddies just three months ago.
Claire Lew (11:41.414)
Oh. Exactly, exactly. And I think even without that historical context, too, I think so many people, it's interesting. It's like a problem that self-selects for itself in the sense of like the people who go into leadership are usually people, unless you're kind of like, well, I, know, there's actually, sorry, let me back up. There's almost like two tracks. It's like either you're like, I feel like this is the only way to progress in my career. And so I'm just going to take it kind of irrespective of what I actually think about sort of the domain, right? Or people themselves. So that's kind of one sort of like bunch of folks.
Then there's like a second group of folks who are like, well, I actually, I've kind of been excited about it. Maybe they've like romanticized the idea. Maybe they're like, I feel like I would be a good leader, or I hated my last boss so much that I just want anything to prove to people that I'm so much better than that. And I want it. So I want to treat people well. And I want people to feel good. And I want people to feel seen.
And so it self-selects actually, in some ways, for a lot of people going in with, understandably, out with like no sort of tangible foundations for actually how do you operate a well-functioning team? How can you communicate when you have these friction points, and how can you actually help the team be successful instead of just optimizing for maybe how you're personally feeling or how each, you know, each person on the team might be feeling.
Doug Dosberg
Interesting. I'm going to switch topics here. Gallup, as you probably are familiar with, recently launched or released their report, and according to Gallup, engagement has gone down in 2024, and it's only gone down twice. And I think it said twice in the past 12 years, 12 years, and that is 2024 and 2020. And the big driver, again, according to Gallup,...
Doug Dosberg (13:38.034)
…is that manager engagement is going down, which I thought was kind of interesting, right? So that's driving this dip in engagement. All of a sudden, managers are not engaged as they once were. How does that make you feel, Claire?
Claire Lew
I mean, not surprised, quite honestly.
Doug Dosberg
Yeah.
Claire Lew
Right? I think there's, you know, when you think about, you know, what is engagement fundamentally, right at work, it's a level of attention really, and about what's going on. And then probably secondarily, it's like a level of connection and rapport and positivity. So when I think about everyone has limited bandwidth for that attention. You think about what's been happening in the past year and this year on so many different levels,you know, whether it's economic, you've had so many organizations starting to feel the effects of inflation and needing to do layoffs. There's job uncertainty, you have AI. And so now people are like, oh wow, is my job going to get taken over? Does any of this mean anything anyway, right? It gets really existential really quickly.
And then you have, you know, of course, a global and political unrest and all sorts of changes that are happening. And so I think the level of intention to even pay attention when you're put in a position of, okay, am I safe? is my role, does my role even matter anymore? Especially, you know, when you have all these rising trends of, you know, the management layer, it's like trendy right now to say that, like we don't want a lot of managers in a company or managers are bad, right? It's like all the headlines are, know, Jensen Huang and Nvidia, you know, at Nvidia, he doesn't do, you know, he doesn't do any one-on-ones. He just has 60 people reporting directly to him, or you have this idea of founder mode from Paul Graham, right?
Doug Dosberg
Right.
Claire Lew
Where it's like managers are bad, and like anyone who likes is in this idea sort of…
Claire Lew (15:48.59)
…coordinating people, it's like busy work, and it's not the real work. And then you have like the, you know, the rise of AI where, you know, people are thinking, do I need people to oversee others when I can just kind of have these like super ICs, like super individual contributors owning different areas? And so all this to say, sorry, I'm going in a lot of different places here, but I think all this to say, I think it creates an environment where the expectation of what my role is feels like it might not matter as much.
And so I think it’s a result, people are kind of looking over their shoulders more, it's harder to be engaged. And then I think the level of positive rapport, it's like when you have all these companies doing layoffs, when you're worried and looking at your own company's performance, you're not going to feel good or care that much about the organization, you know, like even at a so-called big company, right? How many the big layoff with Meta recently? Like how many times has Google done layoffs in the past couple of years?
It's like, if you would have talked to someone in 2020, they would have been probably shocked to hear that. And so I think it's, yeah, it's unsurprising, right, that people are feeling that way. There's a lot happening.
Doug Dosberg
Yeah.
Una Japundza
It's a little bit scary, though, because each of these managers has, let's say, 15 to 20 people reporting to them. So if the manager's not feeling engaged, well, those 20 people are probably not going to feel engaged.
Claire Lew
Oh yeah.
Una Japundza
Anyway, it's going to trickle down, right?
Doug Dosberg
That’s a good point.
Una Japundza
It's a very scary, in terms of this is a pretty good kind of point where you can intervene. And if the managers can be awesome and in a productive mood.
Una Japundza (17:32.696)
They're more likely to help their teams also be in a productive mood. So maybe next year, there's going to be a lagging indicator of employee engagement that has dropped again because of previous years' management engagement has dropped down.
Claire Lew
Absolutely.
Doug Dosberg
Curious now?
Claire Lew
Yeah, you know, it's interesting. Like a thing I often like to say is, you know, stress begets stress begets stress begets stress, meaning that, you know, we're feeling stressed from the markets, which then gets transferred to the boards of all these companies. It gets transferred to the CEOs and the C-level, and then they transfer it on to their directors, who transfer it to middle managers and frontline managers, who are transferring it to their teams. So everyone is feeling all of it, and it kind of is. Yeah, it all is cascading down.
I do think you bring a really important point, or I think is an important question, which is what is the role of a manager and of a leader to, I don't want to use the word maybe protect, but to be sort of a stalwart against the fact that there is so much change, the fact that there is so much uncertainty, like is there any agency right for leaders to have a positive role when all this is happening?
My answer is absolutely. I think it's the only kind of way we find stability, right? I think the reason I often use that phrase, like stress begets stress begets stress, is like it's a cycle unless someone stops it, right? And it does often start, or it trickles from the top.
Claire Lew (19:09.11)
And so I think it is, if anything, even more prescient and important that we as leaders look at our roles and go, there's actually an opportunity here to not solve for all of this, but to create some kind of sense of stability amidst all this change and uncertainty.
And I think the key thing is, again, not solving it, not saying I'm gonna make the uncertainty go away, but I'm gonna find ways to give people a sense of still predictability, control, care, some clarity around things where it's not going to feel as rocky or I say, you know what, it is rocky, but it's okay that it's rocky.
Una Japundza
I think that especially in bigger companies, the role of the manager is so important, even though right now he feels like even have managers? Right? Like, people are questioning the role. But you know, when someone asks you, what's the company culture like at Amazon? It's a useless question. You can't answer it. It very much depends on what's the culture of this team. What's the culture of this business unit? Right? There's no such thing as the culture of a 200,000-person company. Very, very hard. Cause you're to have great teams at Amazon, and you can have teams that you don't really like. Same with any other big company.
And this is where the person who's leading that team is the key, right? Because they can shield the team from the BS of the bureaucracy, or they can amplify it and make it even worse, right? So it really depends on that, such a big, like the manager, I think their unit is kind of like a beehive, right? You're trying to kind of manage your own unit in these big companies because, you know, Jeff Bezos doesn't detect like the individual person's role on the team and kind of the culture of a 20-person warehouse distribution team, right? Something small like that.
Claire Lew
Absolutely.
No, I think you're you're you're spot on in the sense of you know, the whole point of Any leader in general is to manage a point of coordination that otherwise would be completely untenable without some kind of connecting point so I think the Instinct and trend that we're seeing right now is managers aren't maybe as important I'm gonna get rid of more managers. So what that does is then it increases…
Claire Lew (21:34.146)
…the scope and the area in which you're having coordination, right? So now people have, and there are these bigger and broader areas, right? And now it's like, some people might argue, well, now with AI though, I'm gonna have tools to be able to manage that better. And so I'm not gonna need as many people. I think that's true to a certain extent, but I think the reality is what you're talking about, which is there's a limit to how big that scope of coordination is before things start to really break. Right?
And so you will still need someone coordinating something because the area is just going to be too big. And then what's going to happen is the people at the very top who are kind of calling the shots are going to start to have really unrealistic expectations of like, oh, well, your scope was this. Now we're going to have you manage this. And then they're going to start to realize, it starts to break. And then I think people will have a real reckoning moment of like, oh, no, okay. We need to be more realistic about what is the actual area of scope for this work to get done.
Una Japundza
And not forgetting that sometimes a person wants to talk about that they had a bad day, and I don't know if the AI can answer that question or help them think through their bad day and how to solve it.
Claire Lew
It definitely, answers whether I can answer it on the other side, is I think is a totally different question, right?
Una Japundza (22:52.078)
That's very true. That's very true. I recently read a skimmed an article about how Sam Allman said that OpenAI spends a lot of computing power, so a lot of money in the computing power to help Chat GPT be polite when it says, thank you and you're welcome. And that's a great question when you ask a question, and little things like that. I'm like, well, it's kind of worth it, it's money worth well spent, I think, because it makes you feel a little bit more like a human. But anyway, I digress.
Claire Lew
Absolutely.
Una Japundza
Claire, when we were prepping for the podcast, and I asked you what makes work better, one thing you said is,...
Una Japundza (23:21.87)
…people like to be nice, but they don't want to be direct. And you mentioned that as a kind of this first-time manager profile. It's like, I just want to be friends with everyone. I just want people to think of me as nice. Tell us more about this desire to be nice.
Claire Lew
Yeah. Absolutely.
Well, first of all, you know, I want to caveat with like compassion is a good thing and being nice is really good. And we should do more of that in the world, right, rather than less. And I think in the workplace in particular, we often end up conflating a desire to be seen in a certain way, to be seen as pro-social, to be seen as an identity of, I mean, giving empathetic person, especially by the way, if you're trying to like chip away at like the old statue of the boss that was really mean to you, right? It's like we take on the kind of and try to put on the hero cape. But the problem with that is that's actually not really what our teams want nor need. Like when we're trying to actually get work done, when there's a problem to be solved, when there's an important message to be relayed.
People don't want cushioning. They want the truth. They want to know where they stand. They want to know what's going on. They want to know what they can do better. And it feels like a disservice to not. And so I think for a lot of, you know, especially newer managers, but even senior leaders, right? We go, I have this feedback that I need to give to this person that I just like, don't know how to say it without just coming across as rude or I’m really worried about it and so you sit on it, you don't say anything, problem gets bigger and bigger and then three months later you're like, oh my God, okay, I have to say something but now it's gonna be awful because I pretty much I think have to fire this person because they're just, you know, doing so poorly and they're gonna be shocked and it's just like gonna suck and maybe I could have even turned performance around before, right? So this delayed feedback is, you know, one of the consequences of…
Claire Lew (25:32.406)
…wanting to protect this sort of illusion of being a nice person, when the reality is being direct is kind, right? Being honest and upfront is kind. It's also the job, right? So I think a lot of times, or in analogy I'll use is think about like, if you go to the gym, right, you might, if you're really into working out. You might hire a trainer, right?
And the trainer their job is literally to make sure you're doing your form correctly, giving you certain exercises. And if your trainer all of a sudden one day just decided to not give you feedback about your posture, or you're over-exerting yourself, or you should change your reps, or you're not doing that right. If they didn't give you that feedback, you would probably fire them.
That's not a very good trainer. That is the job is to give feedback about how I'm doing so that I can perform better. And it is literally the same exact thing with leadership. It is an inherent part of the job to actually be observing what's happening, sharing that information back.
Now there is a way to do it where you're not just like, you're a disaster, you're a mess, you know, like no one likes you, you know, just like being, you don't have to be cruel about it. That you can be direct. You can be pointed. You can be specific. Yeah, I'll pause there.
Una Japundza
Doug, sounds like you have something on your mind, either feedback you received that was too nice, or what's on your mind.
Doug Dosberg (27:11.662)
It just makes me wonder if I give enough feedback, and how am I when I'm giving that feedback? It's funny because I think I suffer from this like condition of always wanting to be nice, and I think it's more that I want to be seen as being nice rather than I just want to be nice. So it's the illusion.
Claire Lew
Absolutely. And I think there's nothing inherently wrong again with that.
But I think for many of us, and myself included, to be frank with you, I literally, small side note, I gave a piece of feedback to a team member earlier this year, and I was trying to be thoughtful and think about the context and understand where they're coming from. And so I wrote up a thing and I took some screenshots, and I just thought it was really, you know, nuanced and well done, and I shared it. And his response to me was, Claire, please be more direct and do not take all this time to share all of these details with me. I want you to just tell me quickly and up front. Like I don't need all, like this is just, it's like, it's overdone.
And I laughed when I received that, like talking about, you know, feedback on feedback, but I laughed because he was right. He was right, right?
He didn't want to have anything be softened and massaged to certain extent. He just wanted to understand the thing that could be different and better. Now, you some people would say, okay, well, maybe this person, this team member, he may be on one kind of spectrum of an extreme of like really, really wanting anything that's direct. Sure. But generally speaking, most people want to know, most people will often say, why didn't you tell me sooner? Or most people will find it actually disrespectful if they later learn that it's a thing that you were holding back because non-disclosure is actually non-transparency.
Doug Dosberg
Yeah.
Claire Lew
So if you're trying to be nice and someone who's really transparent and open, it's like, well, actually, if you're holding that in you, if you notice something and then don't say something, that's actually even directly against that value of…
Claire Lew (29:30.616)
…transparency.
Una Japundza
I have a trick that I use when it's hard to give feedback, regardless of whether it's work or like to my sister.
But this is how I'll put myself in a space to not be nice, but be direct. I'll think of salad in your teeth, right? If someone has salad in their teeth, if I don't tell them they're walking around the world with lettuce in their teeth, like how am I being a good friend right now if I don't tell them about that, right? But if you tell them, it's kind of awkward for the first second, and then they're so grateful you told them. So they're not walking around the world.
So when I put it, I kind of use that example, I'm like, okay, it's just lettuce in their teeth, right? And I don't want them to walk around with lettuce in their teeth, right? That, at least, helps me get in the space of being nice and having compassion. It's actually feeling for that person coming home at the end of the day and realizing they have lettuce in their teeth, and no one told them all day.
Claire Lew
Exactly. They want to know about, they want to know. No one doesn't want to know.
Una Japundza
Exactly. And it's like, if you're not trying to help them, then maybe it's not feedback. Then it's kind of you're trying to change them, or direct them, or make them something that they're not. That's different, right? It's like, hey, they have lettuce in their teeth. They're probably going to want to know about that. You should just tell them. Helps them put me in a good mood, in a good kind of productive space to get feedback.
Claire Lew (30:45.728)
I love that.
Doug Dosberg
That’s good.
Claire Lew
Love that.
I think one of the things that you shared in that, that we teach a lot at Canopy is this idea to make sure to say the thing, right? So, for example, to take the lettuce example, some people might go, okay, yeah, I need to tell them that they have lettuce in their teeth. So they go, hi, so like you're looking really nice today, and you see the weather, and like, yeah, I love your outfit and like your smile is really nice, and like what'd you have for lunch? And that's great. Well, did you know I kind of happened to notice at one point at this time, right?
And I share this, maybe it's not about actually lettuce and the teeth, but we often will try to kind of massage and dance our way into the moment to get closer and closer and inch and maybe they'll even get the hints as they get closer and it's going to be really elegant and smooth.
When in fact, if you're the person with lettuce in your teeth, you're just like, what are you even talking about? I have no idea what you're even talking about. And so just to remember to always to make sure to say the thing.
I have another like anecdote that I'll never forget from you, maybe familiar with the company Intercom and their co-founder, Des Traynor. We were…
Claire Lew (32:07.32)
…talking, I think it was on a podcast that we did together. And he had shared with me how he had some difficult feedback he needed to get someone one time. And he like prepped for it. And he wrote down the thing that he wanted to say, the feedback on like a little post-it note. And he put the post-it note like on his computer, cause it was like a Zoom, you know, call. He's looking at the post-it note, you know, being like, okay, that's what I’m going to say.
He goes into the Zoom and he has this conversation with the person, has the conversation, gets off the call, looks at the post-it note, and was like, oh my god, I didn't say the thing. I didn't say anything on the post-it note. Like I said, all this other stuff, and just didn't say the very thing that I wanted to say. Right. And so it's just this idea of like, well, we have to make sure to say the thing.
Una Japundza
It’s so hard. Easier said than done.
Claire Lew
Oh yeah, it's so hard.
I think one of my tricks that we teach to like make it easier to say the thing is think about it like a newspaper, right? So in a newspaper, there's always one big headline, and it's usually pretty short. Well, maybe not these days, but yeah, know it's gotten a little, yeah, not too click baiting, hopefully your headline, but in a time, right, of, of maybe more traditional journalism. But there's a headline and it's like five words, where it's like, and it just gets the main point across. And then you can kind of go into the details.
So when you have a thing to say, just say the headline first. Like, don't worry. I have some feedback I need to give you. Headline.
Doug Dosberg
Love it.
Claire Lew
You know, I noticed that a couple of team members were really dejected after the last team meeting.
Claire Lew (33:56.342)
I noticed that the email communication with the last client was sloppy. I noticed that we are tracking, you know, one week behind on our deadlines. I noticed that you tend that there's a tendency to miss certain details here, right? Headline and then get into the rest of it.
Una Japundza
And often, probably as the giver, you say it right away, and you're like, that wasn't that bad. That person did not hang up on me. They didn't scream at me. Now we can have a conversation. We're just like building up towards the big finale of saying, by the way.
Claire Lew
It's never as bad as we think it is. And the longer we wait, the worse it gets.
Una Japundza
Claire, one more thing I wanted to ask you about before we wrap up, which is when we're talking about making work better, you said a lot of times people don't know what is expected out of them. There's just no clarity. They are like I don't even know what good looks like.
What are the things, how are you, where are you running into that, and what advice would you have for people who are either confused about what good looks like, or people who are leading them who have no idea how to lead?
Claire Lew
Yeah, you know, I write a lot about this on our newsletter because it comes up in so many different forms, but I'll give you an example, right? So a leader will tell, let's say I have a direct report, right? And I'll say the direct report. I need you to step up. Let's just pause on that. What does that mean? Actually.
Una Japundza (35:23.118)
Talk more, be available late at night, send more Slack messages. Right?
Claire Lew
Okay. Yeah, exactly. It could mean, yeah, I want you to be more proactive in meetings. It could mean I want you to be more prepared. It could be I want you to take more ownership. It could be I want you to work later hours. It could mean I want you to improve your executive communication. What, like it could mean like literally thousands of permutations of a thing.
So as a leader, I go, I want you to step up. A month goes by, I don't feel like the person hasn't stepped up. And now I'm frustrated. I'm like, I told you I needed to step up. And the person's like, I don't even know what step up means, but it's like so lost kind of in the conversation that that's not even articulated, right?
And then often the reason why I say to the person, I want you to step up, is, I'm actually not really sure what I'm wanting either. I'm just saying that because there are a few things. Like I just want the person to be doing better, just like generally, but as a leader, actually haven't like taken the time to yet really distill exactly what I mean by stepping up, it's maybe availability, maybe it's prioritizing better and being more proactive in meetings. Okay, great. But as a leader, if we're not precise, right, about what we actually intend and mean, then there's no way we can expect the according results from our team.
Una Japundza
Doug, do you remember from our last podcast recording the wrong rock boss story?
Doug Dosberg Yeah.
Una Japundza
We had a guest, and she taught us this, I think it's called the wrong rock.
So you tell someone, hey, I need you to go get a rock. And then the person gets a rock, and then the boss is like, well, not that one. I need you a different one. So they keep bringing all these rocks without even knowing what kind of rock do you want, big or smaller, round or rectangular, or what is even the shape of this?
Una Japundza (37:12.302)
And this sounds like a lot of that game. It's like, I don't know what I want, but you should just keep trying until what you did hits what I kind of think you should do without even knowing what you should do.
Claire Lew
Totally, and it ends up being circular and wasting a lot of effort and just causing a lot of frustration all around when that could be used to actually move things forward.
Doug Dosberg
That's awesome. Well, Claire, thank you for coming on our podcast. But before we let you go, we do a little thing here where I don't know if you're familiar with Hey Taco, but with Hey Taco, everyone has five tacos that they can give each day to recognize someone or to show appreciation or just to simply put a smile on someone's face. Who are you giving your five tacos to today and why?
Claire Lew
Yes, I love this. So good. The power of gratitude.
Doug Dosberg
The power of gratitude.
Claire Lew
I will give the first, a taco, to my good friend, Emily, who's just always a wonderful cheerleader. And she just always sends really helpful and supportive texts, which I feel like no one's great at texting. And she's just she's just really good at that.
Claire Lew (38:27.882)
Always, yeah, always such an amazing friend.
I have to give a taco to my amazing husband, of course, who always reminds me to focus on self-care. You always need somebody else to help you focus on self-care. So that's how it always goes to remind you to know, maybe you should take a break, maybe you should slow down, right? So I have to say my husband.
I have to say my brother, my younger brother, who always just keeps me in check, talks about giving feedback. My brother's never shy to give me feedback on anything. You should be nicer to Mom, you know? You should be, you I feel like that comment wasn't necessary.
Una Japundza
He should be a manager, sounds like.
Claire Lew
Okay. Oh yeah, he's great. He's no problem.
Claire Lew (39:24.654)
So my brother.
I'll give a taco to my dad, who is navigating a really awesome big career change. And it's been really inspiring to watch him do that. So leading by example, that's really cool. And then I'm going to give a taco to myself. Am I allowed to do that?
Doug Dosberg
Love it.
Una Japundza
Anything's possible.
Claire Lew
Exactly. Bending the rules here.
Doug Dosberg (39:51.598)
Why are you giving a taco to yourself?
Claire Lew
Because I think, yeah, I've had a really full awesome week with client engagements. I have another really big week coming up ahead. I feel lucky to get to do this work. And it's also a lot. And so just giving credit to myself for staying kind of cool and calm and not, I think a tendency when things get busy is to kind of overwork too, to feel like you need to over-prepare for things as well, and to not fall into, into that trap, so giving myself a taco for all carrying all the things.
Doug Dosberg
I love that. I love that a lot.
Actually, my five tacos go to you, Claire, for that little piece of inspiration, but also for coming on our podcast. So, thank you.
Claire Lew
Thanks, I love that.
Doug Dosberg (40:43.51)
Where can people find you on the internet?
Claire Lew
Yeah, so I'm on the usual places of LinkedIn and Twitter. My favorite place actually to be online is Substack. I have a newsletter. So newsletter.canopy.is, and folks can subscribe for free and follow all my writing there.
Doug Dosberg
Cool, well, thank you.
Una Japundza
Thank you, Claire.
Claire Lew
Thank you both.
Una Japundza (41:10.094)
Thanks for listening. One of the important things about building a team is gratitude. If you're looking to add more gratitude into your team, check out heytaco.com. We are clearly biased, but it really does work. Use the code AMAZINGTEAMS to receive 15 % off for the first three months of your subscription.
