About our Guests
Caro is a Senior Language Specialist and Certified Coach who travels the world in her spare time. (She also joined us in our very first episode to interview us about the retrospective process.)
Main Takeaways from this Episode
Be open to learning one another’s travel styles
People on this trip had different unstated assumptions about how things were going to go: how much are we going to talk on the hike, how are meals going to go, etc. We might not realize we had different assumptions or expectations, but once we notice differences, we should start talking right away before it impacts the trip or relationships.
There were interpersonal tensions during this trip, which can feel hard to talk about while respecting other people’s feelings and maintaining relationships. But choosing not to talk about things that went badly is an overcorrection.
Radical Candor is a framework that lets us think of “challenging directly” and “caring personally” as independent dimensions in our behavior, and gives us tools to find a way of communicating that both challenges behavior that needs to be addressed while embodying caring for the person you’re confronting.
(We discussed this previously in our Inaugural Newsletter, but you can see us working through an applied case in the current episode.)
Value Systems Can Be Treated Like a Machine, or Like a Baby
If you treat your values like a machine, then you can recognize when they’re not working and tune them. If you treat them like a baby, challenges to them feel like a personal attack. This allows you to work on yourself as you're having an experience, vs. expecting those around you to bear the burden of change.
Agree to a Non-blameful Phrase to Avoid Discovered Problematic Situations
In this trip, after an instance of tempers becoming thin when people were hungry, they coined the phrase “getting in the red,” to refer to starting to get too hungry. This allowed non-blameful logistical discussion, like “I’m starting to get in the red,” or “let’s do this before we get in the red.”
If this expression doesn’t work for you, this commercial for Snickers bars from 2010 offers another option.
Best Practice Links
Product Links
Book: Radical Candor, by Kim Scott
Kumano Kodō Trail references
The video that started it all!The Kumano Kodō Pilgrimage Trail with Giaan Rooney
Kumano Kodō – Tanabe City Kumano Tourism Bureau
How to Ride a Public Bus: Kumano Kodō How-to Series
What Is the Etiquette for Taking Shoes Off in Japan?
