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Does someone you manage get on your nerves, but you're not sure what to do about it? Managing different personalities, even those that irk you, is part of leadership. But psychologist Art Markman says dismissing these employees as simply annoying could keep you from communicating more constructively with them.
Markman is a former professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, and now the school's vice provost for academic affairs. In this episode, he takes questions from listeners who are struggling to manage employees who are unlikable, overly polite, and passive aggressive. He offers advice for how to offer initial feedback and how to coach someone to help them improve their communication skills. This episode originally aired on Dear HBR in June 2018. Here it is.
Welcome to Dear HBR from Harvard Business Review. I'm Dan McGinn. And I'm Alison Beard. Work can be frustrating, but it doesn't have to be. The truth is that we don't have to let the tension, conflicts, and misunderstandings get us down. We can do something about them.
That's where Dear HVR comes in. We take your questions about workplace dilemmas and with the help of experts and insights from academic research, we help you move forward. Today, we're talking about Annoying Subordinates with Art Markman. He's a professor of psychology at the University of Texas. He's also the co-host of the podcast, Two Guys On Your Head. Art, thanks so much for being on the show. Oh, it is great to be here. So have you had an Annoying Subordinate Yourself?
Well, you know, to me, the biggest problem that I have is people who won't tell me what's going on with them, and then assume I will somehow intuit that there's a problem and exactly what that problem is, and then are annoyed with me when I haven't. Even if I come out directly and say, okay, there appears to be something going on, that's probably over the years been my biggest frustration.
And also you feel like it's going to limit their own career. Right. Well, any good leader is trying to groom people for advancement in the future. And when you have people who get in their own way, it is incredibly frustrating. How is it different when it's the boss who finds the subordinates' behavior annoying? How does that power dynamic change the situation?
Well, it doesn't, it doesn't change it. You know, you're certainly in a position to coach someone, and I think people are more likely to take advice like that from someone that they work for. As I always like to say, the old joke is true. You know, we say, how many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb? And of course the answer is one, but the light bulb has to want to change.
Ready for number one? Yeah. Dear HBR, I recently took over a 10 person team. One of my direct reports is challenging. He's a seasoned manager in his 40s. He's technically solid, dependable and motivated. The issue is that his communication style is super frustrating.
He interrupts constantly. Once he begins talking, he doesn't stop until you interrupt him back. After just two weeks as his manager, I gave him direct feedback. I told him that I expect him to not interrupt me. I told him to try to focus his conversation to the task at hand.
It didn't work. It's not just me. Other people are avoiding interacting with him. For example, we were meeting with my boss the other day. The employee gave several fairly long responses that drifted off topic. I could see my boss getting frustrated and giving off body language to wrap it up, but my subordinate did not pick up on it. When I initially joined the team, he would tell me that he felt frustrated about not being in the loop, but no wonder people keep him out of things. It's becoming clear to me that they just don't enjoy being around him.
I have no idea how to deal with this. I can work with him on not interrupting people and keeping his answers crisp. But how do I even bring up that he's not likable? Well, first of all, we have to acknowledge we all know people like this, right? There are people who seem oblivious to what's going on around them socially. And, you know, the letter writer starts by saying, how do I even bring up that he's not likable? It's not so much that you want to say to somebody, you know, nobody likes you.
Yeah, I think that's a bad conversation to have. It tends to kill the conversation early on. The interesting thing about this particular letter, though, is that it feels to me like this guy is unlikable because he's socially awkward rather than unlikable because he's combative. You can start by saying, look, you've expressed that your goal is to be more in the loop. I've noticed a few things that are getting in your way of doing that.
And I want to help you to develop some behaviors that we'll counteract that. So it sounds like the unlikeableness, it sounds like we need to get feedback from other employees on specifically what the issues are and break it down into something that there's an actual specific thing to improve on.
That's right. And I think that even in this letter, there's several examples of things that this supervisor has already noticed that he can use as the basis of initial feedback.
Yeah, the several fairly long responses that drifted off topic, the fact that he didn't notice the higher up boss's body language to wrap it up. Those were definitely red flags to me. What did you notice, Art? That, the interruptions, the droning on and on and on, which means making the same point several times, all of those things are reasons why people would ultimately dread having to interact with this person.
Right. And those are the ones that you then have to begin to address specifically, because what we know about the human action system is we're designed to do things, not to not do things. So we have to give him something to do. So let's think, for example, about the listening better and not interrupting. So the first thing we know about a lot of people's meeting behavior is that they only listen to other people long enough to figure out what they're going to say next, and then they stop listening.
I hope we're not doing that. Okay. I would let you know. So tell him, look, come into every meeting with a notepad. And as soon as you think of something you want to say, write it down so you don't have to keep rehearsing it in your head, which then keeps you from listening to everything everybody else says, because it may turn out that by the time you start speaking, somebody else has already addressed the thing you were going to say, in which case you don't need to say it again.
Then give him a very simple rule. If someone else is speaking, do not say anything. Wait until there's a natural break in the conversation before you attempt to take the floor. So what you're doing is trying to train him to listen for the social breaks that occur as opposed to cutting somebody off in mid-sentence.
I sometimes have a tendency to interrupt people and I've tried to correct it and one of the things that's helped me, it's just a byproduct of my job. I often have to have conversations with people where we're recording the conversation because we're going to write an article or write something based on it.
When I re-listen to them, I'm much more aware because I'm not in that moment. I'm an observer at that point. I can tell when I interrupt. I can kind of tell why I'm interrupting. I'm much more sensitive to the proportion of who's speaking when. So I wondered whether this guy could find some excuse to tape himself in a few conversations and go back. It's almost like watching an instant replay of yourself swinging a golf club. It helps you learn what you're doing wrong. He might learn something from that.
Yeah. Language happens in the moment. And so it's very hard to replay that in your own head. We're not designed to hold on to an exact memory of the way a conversation went. So being able to re-listen to it, I think, is extraordinarily important. And even if this employee can't articulate, this is what I was hoping to accomplish.
as he listens back to a tape of a conversation, he will at least be able to hear a little bit more of why he wasn't effective at communicating whatever point he was making at that time by listening both to the way that he starts that conversation as well as to the meandering element of what he says. Yeah. So Art, it sounds like this is not just a question of how he improves
his speaking in meetings, but he has to become a much more active and develop listener. That's right. One reason why he comes across as unfocused and as not really being on point is because he's not really listening to what it is that anybody else is saying.
How does he then come back to the points that he wanted to make sort of throughout the meetings that he's attending? I just, tactically, I'm trying to understand how it works. Yeah. Because I understand the impulse to interrupt when you have something relevant to say. Yeah. I do it all the time. Well, so, right. And so you've got to, you know, you've got to wait for that natural break in the conversation. Look at that list and put a little check mark against the one thing that is most important for you to say at this moment.
and then stick to it. And this is hard. Clearly, this is something that this guy does. He'll meander from topic to topic without really wrapping it up. And when you talk to him about that, about picking one thing, help him to understand that the reason that you want him to do that is because if he tries to talk about many things,
Whatever great points he's just made are going to get lost because he's running from one thing to the next. But if he just hammers home a single point, everyone is going to hear what he says and everyone is going to remember the thing that he was talking about. And if he has to come back later in the conversation to bring up a second thing, he can do that.
It reminds me a little bit of the process that they use to media coach people who are going to be talking heads on television. They need to learn to pick one point they're going to say and to say it in a fairly concise, almost a sound bite. There's no way you can go on and on on a television format. It almost seems like he needs a modified version of that to succeed in his meeting settings. It reminds me of the advice that Kurt, our excellent producer, gives us.
Not to talk more than 40 seconds? Yes. Exactly. And that's exactly it. So the other joy of having the tape of the conversation is that he can actually take a stopwatch to his turns.
And if he goes on for, I would have said more than a minute, but more than 40 seconds even better, then he's gone on too long. And he needs to practice thinking through, here's a point I wanted to make in a meeting, let me actually write out how I wanted to say it and see if I can write it out in a single sentence or two sentences.
Because another thing that happens to people is that they start speaking without really knowing what they want to say. And so what you're getting is a series of successive drafts from them as they figure out the point that they wanted to make online. And you have to listen to that whole process. And if he practices saying these things concisely, even if he's doing it offline, that will actually benefit him in conversations as well.
I don't know what I'm saying. I'm figuring it out as I go. That's a great point, and I hadn't thought about this until you said it, but I tend to email things instead of having conversations because I know I'm a little bit stronger. I'm in the same way. So it might be that he may be able to circumvent these meetings to a certain extent by saying, no, I'll just send you an email on that.
I did, sorry, I was listening to you. And how can I? And you still remember what you were going to say? And I do. Yeah. Did you write it down? I didn't write it down. I should have. So we all agree that the boss should have a conversation with this employee. Do the other employees need coaching?
to accept this guy a little bit more as he is. Maybe not the interrupting, but did they need to be taught to be more accepting, even if he's not someone they would want to go have a beer with?
I'm not sure about that, actually, because in some ways, part of this development plan is also going to have to be becoming more aware of the social feedback in your environment. To the extent that you basically say to everybody else, you know what, we've got to cut this guy a break. But aren't there just people who are socially awkward and there's sort of nothing you can do about it except be kind? Are you thinking of anyone in particular?
not you don't know what we're having an intervention and it may be in the end that that's where we get to but it's not clear that anyone's ever worked with this person on this before right even though he's in his forties
You know, we've actually ignored a lot of these human elements of things in the workplace for a long time. And so people can kind of drift from job to job without ever actually getting tactical feedback about how to improve their interactions. And so I'm not sure I'd want to lead with. Well, let's just accept that this person is just never going to be someone you want to spend time with. So Dan, what are we telling this boss?
So we think it's great that this boss wants to work with his subordinate to try to help him overcome these behaviors that are holding him back. We think there are a few things that will help this interrupting problem. First, we think that he would benefit if they tape recorded some of their conversations and the subordinate listened back very closely, maybe even with a stopwatch.
Is he jumping into the conversation when there are natural pauses? Is he speaking longer than a minute? He should be trained to bring a notebook into these meetings so that if he has something that he has the urge to jump in and say, he can write it down so he can hold that thought. Some of these are really basic behaviors to try to cure this interrupting problem.
The broader problem of he's not liked by his colleagues on the team, we think if he can get a handle on this interrupting issue, that might go part of the way there. This will be a little bit of a difficult conversation, but if the boss treats it as an opportunity for the subordinate to develop himself to bring out his potential, potentially to advance in the organization, if he can get past these issues, that'll put it in a really positive frame.
On to the next letter. Dear HBR, I'm the manager of a three-person team and I'm having trouble with one of them. It seems like he's always trying to be overly professional and polite. Honestly, it's too much. It can even come off as condescending. For example, I was recently chatting in my office with a colleague when it was about time for my weekly check-in with this employee. He came to the door, so I said goodbye to my coworker and she left.
Even after it was just the two of us, he offered to come back another time. He apologized for scaring off my friend as he put it. I told him he didn't scare anyone off, and it was time for our meeting so he wasn't interrupting. On another occasion, he came to my office with a question, and I was in the middle of typing, but I stopped when he came in.
He apologized for disturbing me and offered to wait while I finished my thought. I said it was no problem and tried to quickly turn to his question to show him that it really wasn't a bother. I get that he's trying to be respectful, but it's overkill and incredibly annoying. I'm not sure if others have the same opinion. Am I wrong to react this way? Should I keep it to myself? Or, as his manager, should I coach him to stop doing it? What should I say?
This is a fun one. And I got a mental image of this employee of being on the younger side. Yeah. We also know from this letter writer that she's a woman. She's a female boss. If the worst problem this female boss has is that her subordinate is just too damn nice. You know, there are worse problems. And this one totally seems to seem solvable.
So this is a fascinating letter because he's being overly deferential. And I think that there are a few intersecting pieces to this. One is the possibility that in the past, he's over correcting for a behavior in which he was more oblivious to other people's time. Or he had a boss who was terrible and mean, and that's how he's learned to act.
Right. Sort of like a, you know, a shelter puppy who's had a bad previous owner. Yeah. And one of the things that that suggests is that this supervisor needs to address it with kindness despite the fact that it's frustrating.
A second component, though, that I think is important is that we have to place this into the current cultural context. I mean, if you look at social media right now, outrage is the emotion du jour. There are lots of examples of interactions between male and female employees, where somebody says something that they meant in a neutral way, in ways that can cause tension as well. And I think that for people learning to navigate that environment,
you can see how someone might inappropriately carry that deference into the workplace because they're just conditioned to, if I do anything that could be perceived as offensive, then there's gonna be something that turns on me. So there's confusion about the rules is what I'm hearing. And one of the things I thought about in this letter also was whether there were some cultural differences here. When I interact with people from other cultures at times, some of them call me sir repeatedly. Some cultures are much, much more polite.
I think we all agree that sort of her first step is to think about why this person is acting this way and try to get less annoyed and more empathetic. I also think maybe it behooves her to gather a bit more information and see if it is just her. Surely she can observe him in interactions with other people. Well, and one of the things she needs to pay attention, not just to this deference over interruptions, but is this deference happening throughout his interactions, even if they're just happening with her?
So if he defers to her opinion all the time if he defers to her view about how things should be done, then she needs to help him to gain enough self confidence to actually have an interaction that will allow him to disagree right every once in a while because that is career limiting.
You know, being overly polite is a minor annoyance, but where it rises to the level of something that can actually stand in the way of someone's advancement is when they're not really willing to stand up for anything that they're interested in, anything that they believe should be done. Right. So how do you build someone's self-confidence?
Well, I think you need to give people some small victories. So at that point where he just walks in and you're interrupted in something and he immediately begins speaking at the end of that interaction, say, I also want to thank you for just moving ahead with the conversation. And likewise, if he comes in and says, you know what, I'm a little bothered by this memo that we're planning to send to this client or whatever it is, after discussing that,
Again, be sure to thank him for I'm glad you came to me with that. It's really important that we get your input. Your expertise really matters here.
I love that you're suggesting not necessarily starting with this sort of let's sit down and have a conversation about your behavior, but more, let me look at how I'm acting the moment he comes in the room and does something polite. She says that she responds, it's no problem, but is it a, it's no problem or is it a, it's no problem. You know, is she expressing her annoyance with her body language and her tone of voice, which will probably just make him become more polite and more scared and more deferential.
Yeah. Might be something that the boss is doing that's sort of inviting and triggering this behavior. Possibly. And it may not be her, it could be past bosses as we said, or it could just be the boss. I must admit, I thinking back to my college career, which is receding rapidly into the past, I remember going to a professor's office hours for the first time,
and being so afraid of college faculty that I could barely catch my breath in having a conversation with them. And they seemed utterly oblivious to my distress. I think I'm kind of a normal approachable person. So I forget that gulf between subordinate and more superordinate person.
My first internship when I was in college, I remember calling my boss on the first day Mr.. So-and-so because I thought you just addressed adults like that and everybody looked at me like I had three heads like why aren't you calling them by their first name? I didn't know what the rule was. Yeah, I think that's absolutely right So it may very well be that he's got to just get used to what it means to have a boss who is actually approachable and
What if she tries to modify her behavior, build his self-confidence in subtle ways, and he still keeps being overly deferential, not just her, but to other people in a way that's gonna damage his career? What should she do?
Great question. I think a lot of what she needs to do is to think about how do you help people to be really tactical about these very broad things you say. So if I say to you, I want you to be less deferential and you don't know how to do that.
then you're not going to change your behavior because you're not sure what to do. So one of the things that you need to do is to say, OK, so here are three specific things I want you to try. The next time you come into my office and I'm doing something, I want you to ignore the fact that I was doing something, knock on the door. And when I look up and say, yes, I just want you to state your question. And that's a very specific behavior. And I promise that I'll react well to that.
Number two, when you have something that you want to say in a meeting that disagrees with someone else, you don't have to apologize to everybody that you're going to say something that disagrees. You can say, in addition, I'd like to add this point, right? And give people a script. Here's the language. And basically say, okay, here let's pick a few situations in which you could be more assertive. And in those situations, here's the script I want you to follow.
It's like when someone says, um, or like too much, they just need to become aware that they're doing it, recognize that it's not a helpful thing and work over time through practice and through the scripts you suggest to solve it. You can get better at it over time.
It's so interesting, because I didn't really identify with this question at all, because I don't consider myself to be overly polite, and I feel like I'm not surrounded by people who are super deferential. But art, when you were talking, it made me think of the fact that I used to, whenever anyone gave me a compliment about my work, I would say, oh, well, there were a lot of people who helped me, and I didn't work that hard on it, or I would sort of brush it off. And my boss coached me to say, I want you to start saying thank you.
Like just say thank you and I've started doing that and it is just that little simple thing that I feel like maybe will in the future enhance my career because I'm seen as more competent and sort of deserving of praise, I guess.
Yeah, yeah, and I think that this idea of learning the specific things that you need to do in these kinds of social situations is important because we often give people very general, very abstract advice, and then we're frustrated because they don't seem to be following it. So Allison, what are we telling this female boss?
So I think as a first step, she should step back and understand why this annoying employee may be as polite as he is and just approach the situation with empathy and kindness. She should gather a little bit more information to determine whether this politeness is more of a deference that will limit his career in the future.
She should try to change the dynamic just in everyday interactions with body language and tone of voice and comments that build his confidence. And then if those sort of subtle cues don't work, she should have a direct coaching conversation with him telling him that she really wants him to succeed in his career. And she sees this one aspect of his behavior as possibly limiting him.
and then work on a tactical plan for getting him to be more assertive, being very specific about three things that she'd like him to do to improve. Allison, you did that very well. Thank you. It's working. The coaching is working.
Dear HBR, one of my subordinates is extremely passive aggressive. She will not speak openly with me about any issues she's having at work. And that's even when I ask her directly if there's any way I can help with her workload. Instead, she utilizes an elaborate gossip chain. And two weeks after the fact, I'll find out that she had a problem. She also has the ear of one of my advisory board members. If something isn't resolved to her satisfaction, I may get a call about my leadership.
I constantly feel like I'm in a fog of anxiety. I never know if this employee is upset or not. Nothing she does taken on its own is enough for a disciplinary action, but honestly, I just want to fire her. I'm tired of her antics. Please help.
I mean, this is one of the tough ones where you have somebody that you think you're trying to work with and they're not willing to come out and say something directly to you, but they're going to make an end run around you. One of the very first things that this person needs to do is to sit down with that member of the advisory board
and explain that it's not helping his relationship with his supervisee to be getting the feedback in this indirect way and essentially to try to cut off that communication loop. It's interesting that you say talk to the advisory board first before even the employee.
Well, there's a multi-faceted strategy here. One of the things you have to do is to make it hard for the employee to get what they want through indirect means. Because if I'm going to ask you to change your behavior, you're going to do your best to keep going back to doing what has worked for you in the past. So one of the things that's really important to do is to try to make sure that that behavior that has been working for you doesn't work anymore.
The letter writer talks about an elaborate gossip chain. So does this outreach to higher ups in the organization need to expand beyond the specific advisory board member? I mean, should there be other managers that he's talking to and having the same conversations with about this employee?
Well, you know, the place that closes the loop is this advisory board member. And so I think starting there is probably the best thing in part because at least initially you don't want to damage the reputation of an employee that you're having difficulty with, particularly if this turns out to be something that can be fixed so that a year from now, actually this person is a model employee because it's hard to unring that bell if you start telling people this person's a problem.
So part of what you want to do is to try and talk just with the direct source at the moment, that is that advisory board member, and really try to work this out in a way where this employee then doesn't become labeled as a problem. Presumably this plan is going to involve some sort of a difficult conversation with a subordinate. How do you open this can of worms?
I view his first step is to say, why does this employee act this way? Why is she conflict avoidant? Are my assumptions about her passive aggressive nature correct? Or am I doing something that's causing her not to come to me?
Yeah, here I agree with Allison. One of the first things to do is to try to figure out exactly what's going on and to make sure that you don't step into a meeting where you immediately begin to accuse somebody of doing something without provocation. One of the other interesting lines in this letter that stands out to me is I constantly feel like I'm in a fog of anxiety.
I don't know about you, but I occasionally have people who disagree with something that I'm doing and I may not be getting along with. I don't live in a fog of anxiety as a result of that. And so one of the other questions that this person needs to ask themselves before doing anything else is why am I so anxious about this employee who I'm not getting along with?
I feel that it was a symptom of the fact that he doesn't seem to have a strong network within the organization and he doesn't have these connections to board members that she does. So he feels, although he technically isn't a position of power, that he's power less in some way because he doesn't feel supported. It's important to understand how influence works in organizations and make sure that you have it.
Absolutely. And I think on top of that, one of the things that he has to look at is, well, what is my reaction when somebody actually does make a complaint to me? Because anyone who experiences a lot of anxiety when they're not getting along with people, well, this is somebody who, if you come to me and give me a complaint, my first reaction might not be to really take that seriously, to sit down with you and try and work through that. My first reaction might be to get defensive.
If so, why would someone want to keep coming back to you? This anxiety may actually be creating part of the problem. If that's what's happening, then when this supervisor sits down with his employee, he needs to sit down and say, look, I realize that there are times you've come to me or we've had discussions in which I haven't reacted well. I need to work on that, but I need you to keep talking to me directly and not be making that end run around.
after that actually questions can be really helpful you know to say okay so please tell me what's going on right and give somebody an opportunity to state their side of it because now you're i'm not accusing you of anything i'm trying to understand the situation this idea that things are only going to get worse if we talk about this if i let the cat out of the bag i think if you can condition the person to say hey terrible things aren't going to happen if you tell me you're angry that might be a key to maybe changing that behavior
And then you can begin to talk about how this makes you feel, right? So I'm not, you know, you're not saying you did this. What you're saying is, well, when I find out from the advisory board member that you have a problem, even though I
tried to speak to you directly, I'm frustrated by that because I can't help you to grow as an employee and I can't help make the workplace a better place for you if I don't really find out what's going on in a way where we can have a conversation about it. So again, it's about your reaction to it rather than the accusation, which now at least provides an opportunity for a productive conversation.
I think also, you mentioned emphasizing that this is a developmental conversation and you really care about the person's growth and the team's performance. I feel like putting that at the start of the conversation, just saying, I want our relationship to improve. I really want you to succeed in this job. Might be another thing that he could do to just set the right tone.
I'm going to flat out disagree with you there because the letter writer, the letter says, I honestly want to fire her. He doesn't necessarily have our best interests at heart here. He's coming at this with some not positive motives. Right. But I think that he's fine. Turn it around. He is not working well with his employee. She is well connected in the organization. If they don't continue to work well together, he will not succeed.
So he needs to stop wanting to fire her and actually develop some positive feelings before he can sort of positively coach her. Yeah, absolutely. And maybe even spend a little bit more time with her to figure out why she's acting this way.
you have to start with that orientation even on those days when seeing that person and knowing what they're capable of makes your skin crawl. Because if in fact he can break through and change that behavior, then he may have somebody who's actually an extraordinarily valuable employee there. And so you've got to start with that orientation and then take it from there. So what if he has this conversation and the behavior just continues? What does he do then?
Well, look, the joy of the HR process is when you sit down to develop somebody, you can begin to document these things. You can say, well, here's the goal that we set. The goal we set was we're going to have open conversation about problems. And so now if you document, well, lo and behold, I'm getting another problem the third hand.
Well, you know, now you're creating that trail that you can come back to somebody and say, okay, look, we've talked about trying to fix this and we're not having success with this. Let's try this again, but at some point maybe you might be better suited in a role working elsewhere in the organization or perhaps elsewhere altogether.
Maybe we could take the unlikable interrupting guy and put him in a cube with the overly polite apologetic guy from the last letter. Throw in the passive aggressive lady. What are we telling this manager, Dan?
This manager really has to do two things. They need to open a direct line of communication with the employee, communicate that, look, if there's a problem, I need to hear about it directly. I don't want to hear about it third hand two weeks later. There's only positive things are going to happen when you open up to me. There's not going to be negative conflict. I know that these conversations are going to be hard for you, but in order for you to advance and develop, this is really something you need to learn to do.
He also needs to have a conversation with the advisory board member, make it clear that he has a plan for dealing with this issue, and that he's looking for support from the advisory board member to stop this back channel avenue of communication. In all these conversations, it's important to focus on actions and behaviors, not impugn people with intentions or negative motivations for all this.
And again, to focus on the idea that this is a developmental opportunity for the person to advance their career if they can cure this behavior that's holding them back. I think we got it. Art, thank you so much for helping us work through these listener problems today. This was great fun. I'm glad we had a chance to talk about it.
That was psychologist Art Markman in conversation with Allison Beard and Dan McGinn on Dear HBR. Markman was formerly a professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, and now he's the school's vice provost for academic affairs.
We'll be back next Wednesday with another handpicked conversation about leadership from Harvard Business Review. If you found this episode helpful, share it with your friends and colleagues and follow our show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. While you're there, be sure to leave us a review. And when you're ready for more podcasts, articles, case studies, books, and videos with the world's top business and management experts, you'll find it all at hbr.org.
This episode was produced by Kurt Nickish and Sandy and me, Hannah Bates. Ian Fox is our editor, music by Coma Media, and special thanks to Maureen Hoke, Erica Truxler, Ramsey Cabaz, Nicole Smith, Anne Bartholomew, and you, our listener. See you next week.
