Once everyone is on board with your idea, it’s time for action, which brings us to step 6 of the Get Shit Done Wheel. On this episode of the Radical Candor Podcast, Kim, Jason and Amy discuss the good, the bad and the ugly as it relates to the implementation of that decision you’ve just persuaded everyone to get behind. Listen to learn how to toggle between leading and implementing personally. You can't abandon the first for the second. You have to integrate the two.
Radical Candor Podcast Episode At a Glance
If you become a conductor, you need to keep playing your instrument. If you become a sales manager, you need to keep going on sales calls yourself. If you manage a team of plumbers, fix some faucets.
Of course, you need to spend time listening to people in 1:1s, leading debates, and so on.
But you need to learn to toggle between leading and implementing personally. Don’t abandon the first for the second; integrate the two.
If you get too far away from the work your team is doing, you won’t understand their ideas well enough to help them clarify, to participate in debates, to know which decisions to push them to make, to teach them to be more persuasive.
The GSD wheel will grind to a halt if you don’t understand intimately the “stuff ” your team is trying to get done.
As the boss, part of your job is to take a lot of the “collaboration tax” on yourself so that your team can spend more time implementing. The responsibilities you have as a boss take up a tremendous amount of time.
One of the hardest things about being a boss is balancing these responsibilities with the work you need to do personally in your area of expertise. There are four things to know about how to get this balance right (see the steps in the tips below).
Radical Candor Podcast Checklist
Don’t waste your team’s time. Allow space for people to get the work done by limiting low-value interactions and interruptions while also making yourself available to offer coaching and guidance as needed.
Keep the dirt under your fingernails. Be a thought partner who thinks of themselves as someone who is alongside their employees listening, advising and helping versus someone who is above them or their work.
Block time to implement. Put implementation time on your calendar and treat it as you would any other important meeting or task. Don’t allow people to appropriate your implementation time for something they think is more important.
Fight meeting proliferation. Everybody hates the meeting that could have been an email. Before you schedule a meeting, ask yourself if it’s really necessary, and if it is — only include the people who are critical. Perhaps most important, don’t schedule a meeting over someone’s implementation time.    


Radical Candor Podcast Resources
4 Ways To Persuade Others You’ve Made The Best Decisions
Successfully Implement Your Ideas At Work In 4 Easy Steps
Think Time: 6 Ways To Leverage This Untapped Tool
If we’re so busy, why isn’t anything getting done? | McKinsey
Radical Candor Podcast: Are You A Micro Or Absentee Manager?
No Task Left Behind? Examining the Nature of Fragmented Work
3 Ways to Bounce Back After a Work Interruption | Duke Today
You can learn more about the implementation-making process discussed on this episode in chapters 4 & 8 of Radical Candor