The Clarifier – Details, episodes & analysis

Meet Natalie Glance, Duolingo’s Chief Engineering Officer, as she digs into the contradictions of modern leadership: How do you give employees the space to fail and learn while still hitting your team’s targets? Can you really build a diverse, empowering culture when you're sprinting on the startup treadmill?

In this conversation, she reveals what it felt like to be a math-loving girl and to encounter unsettling data at age 12. That experience still informs how she thinks about managing (and equipping others to manage) folks from underrepresented groups. 

She describes how she strives to scope roles thoughtfully and set folks up for success vs. “meddle” and explores why she now resists the temptation to over-invest in ensuring the success of a single team member, opting instead to attack problems at a “design level”. 

Joining the conversation is Natalie’s executive coach and founder + CEO of Talentism, Jeff Hunter. Together, with host Angie D’Sa, they expose Natalie’s journey with executive coaching and hard won lessons from the perspective of a woman in tech.

Talentism frameworks referenced in this episode: 

• Big4 (tool to learn about a person) 
• 4D (tool to understand levels of people management)

Meet Simmone Taitt, founder + CEO of Poppy Seed Health, who is rewriting the rules of pregnancy, loss and postpartum support. With 24/7 1:1 access to doulas, midwives, and nurses, Poppy Seed Health offers on-demand emotional and mental health support. 

Simmone opens up to Angie D'Sa, her executive coach, about how she transformed her personal trauma into profound purpose. And what it looked like to get out of her own way and build her team. 

Simmone shares a challenging part of her founder journey - one where she was slow to replace a star performer who left the company. And how limiting narratives got in the way of fast hiring and thoughtful onboarding.  When she faced those narratives head on, she evolved as a leader and her business experienced positive momentum.

If you've ever felt intimidated by putting together a team or been the new hire, this conversation is for you. Listen in and apply Simmone's hard won learning in your own life and work. To learn more about how Angie and other Talentism coaches guide their clients, check out Talentism.com

The Clarifier team wants to hear from you.

What are the challenges you are experiencing as a founder or manager right now? As the manager or the person being managed? Send an email or voice memo to podcast@talentism.com describing your challenge and we might just address it on the show.

Meet Christina Sass, founding partner of Dive In Labs and co-founder of Andela. Tune in to learn:

• How to productively analyze feedback
• Key challenges faced by founders
• Why your context matters 
• When to empower your team and let go

  
  This episode has been updated since its original upload on 9/14/2023 to better reflect the standards of Talentism and was reuploaded on 9/22/2023.

CEO coach Trevor Hunter unpacks his contrarian POV on goals. Tune in to learn… 

• How to set effective goals that win
• The science and psychology of goals
• The problems with conventional thinking about goals

Founder and CEO Jeff Hunter reveals why being a good manager is not about learning skills—it's about uncovering your fears.

Listen to learn:

• The origin of today's thinking on management and why it’s wrong
• Challenges leaders face when managing their people
• Key practices for becoming a better manager
• Essential frameworks for developing effective management system

"How do I take responsibility for a system that I, as a leader, have created?" Jeff Hunter tackles this question by sharing his reflections as a founder, CEO, hiring manager and executive coach. 

Tune in to learn the three steps to ‘Start With Me’ and begin taking responsibility to your contribution to a suboptimal system.

When the time comes for founders and CEOs to build their executive teams, it can feel challenging or even threatening. By not acknowledging their fear of letting go, these leaders either stay too distant or swoop in too quickly to grab the wheel. This results in founders and CEOs undermining themselves and their executives. Tune in to learn...

• The struggles leaders face when letting go of responsibilities

• Methods for evaluating the talent needed at each stage of your organization’s growth

• Strategies for successful onboarding and management of new executives

• Three essential frameworks for determining who should own what responsibilities within your organization

Today employees’ expectations of their work experience and of their leaders are heightening. This creates inevitable, sometimes painful, confusion for leaders. Founder and CEO Jeff Hunter explores how the talent market is evolving, how we explore these great expectations, and how leaders can recognize their own confusion and adapt.

The complexities of co-founder relationships are vast. Founder and CEO Jeff Hunter provides practical guidance for navigating these complexities and the inevitable challenges.

Meet Joel Keating. He’s Grindr's SVP of Engineering & Chief Information Security Officer. He's joined by his Talentism coach, Gregory Kim.

Together, they describe how paying attention to Joel’s “This Sucks” response can open up the door to curiosity and unlock solutions to big problems at work. But, this only works if the curiosity is genuine. We learn that sometimes Joel can go through the motions: set up a meeting, ask questions, get feedback. But if under those behaviors Joel is actually harboring judgment, it doesn’t unlock anything. 

Greg and Joel have come up with a simple system to avoid the trap of hidden judgments. Joel exposes his expectations. All the time. This act is so simple, but when repeated regularly it has created powerful clarity for Joel and those around him. 

Everyday at Grindr, Joel applies the frameworks he learned through coaching. The problems at work don’t go away, but he is able to move through them with more agency and clarity, making the next challenge that much more manageable.

Listen in and apply Joel's hard won learnings to your work context. For more on the frameworks Joel references, visit Talentism.com