Radical Candor: Communication at Work
Episode: "Leading Through Chaos With Stephanie Chung"
May 28, 2025

Brief Overview

In this episode, host Amy Sandler and Radical Candor co-founder Kim Scott welcome C-suite executive and thought leader Stephanie Chung, author of Ally: How to Lead People Who Are Not Like You. The conversation centers on leading through turbulent times, fostering trust, and the art of caring personally while challenging directly. Chung shares hard-won lessons from her extensive leadership experience in aviation and hospitality, emphasizing how to successfully orient oneself and inspire teams during periods of change and diversity.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Entering Leadership Roles During Turbulence

Orienting Yourself & the Team

• Stephanie often joined organizations or teams in crisis, especially in sales, where failing numbers typically led to her (or someone like her) being brought in.

• She cautions against immediately accepting the executive narrative about a team's problems, choosing instead to assess for herself:

  "Is it the performance? Is it the people? Is it the process? Is it the product? There’s a lot of ifs that I don’t know the answer to if I just listen to one piece—from the CEO." (03:17)

• She typically focuses on process first:

  "Usually, it’s not the people that I focus in on first... What I can do is dive in and look at the process... I can go into any organization and find places of redundancy that are not beneficial for the sales team." (04:05)

First Steps to Trust

• Stephanie always meets with her direct team privately as soon as she starts, emphasizing her expectations, style, and the need for collective success:

  "We’re all going to either win together or we’re going to all lose together. But it’s our choice, right? So by setting the stage, they understand at the very beginning. I’m expecting you to function as a team, to know right here from me." (09:10)

  • She underscores the need for consistency with what she declares on day one to foster trust. (10:39)

2. The Power of Listening & Curiosity

• Stephanie credits her father, a Master Sergeant, for her foundational advice:

  "Always protect your team and always know there’s two sides to every story." (05:48)

• Kim notes that performance numbers are often lagging indicators, and it's essential to diagnose deeper systemic issues rather than immediately blaming people. (06:25)
• Stephanie introduces the “ask, listen, learn, take action” framework (ALLY), advocating for curiosity over mere empathy:

  "I’m less concerned about an empathetic leader... but I’m more focused on a curious leader. Because if you come in with curiosity, then by default you’re going to ask questions you don’t already know the answer to." (23:16)

3. Feedback: Soliciting and Giving It

• Kim opens up about the difficulty of accepting feedback as a new CEO:

  "That was one of the hardest bits of feedback. I didn’t exactly solicit this feedback, but I got it." (13:05)

• Stephanie models vulnerability from the start:

  "There’s going to be something I do or say that will probably offend you somewhere along the line and just know that’s not my intention. So when I do it—not if, when I do it—I would ask that you would right then and there, stop me and correct me." (14:47)

4. Leading Through Change & Emotional Differences

Processing Grief and Change

• Stephanie describes a powerful moment during mass layoffs where her ability to process quickly due to a military upbringing clashed with her colleagues':

  "What I had to do—the lesson that I got out of that—was to learn that not everybody processes the same way." (18:07)

• Kim and Amy connect this to how different communication and emotional processing styles can lead to friction if not understood.

Notable Quote:

Kim Scott: “Not to judge or be judged.” (18:25)

5. Leading Diverse Teams — The ALLY Model

• Stephanie’s book, Ally: How to Lead People Who Are Not Like You, centers on the acronym:

  • Ask
  • Listen
  • Learn
  • (You) Take Action

• She describes the complexity of today’s workforce:

  "Six generations that work... Women as the majority of the population... ethnic groups growing, non-ethnic groups shrinking... neurodiversity, different able-bodied folks, LGBTQ+—a lot of trying to lead people, and they’re not like you, the leader." (21:54)

• Curiosity is highlighted as the critical meta-leadership skill for these conditions.

6. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Is Team Performance

• Kim and Stephanie agree:

  "More diverse teams simply outperform traditional teams... and diversity—not just in race and gender, but diversity of thought. Intellectual diversity is powerful." (24:00)

• Stephanie warns against both "self-anointed" allies and performative inclusion, advocating for genuine, ongoing action:

  "What’s happening is people are starting to self-anoint themselves as an ally with absolutely no receipts to back up the statement." (34:10)

• Memorable advice:

  "Different level, different devil. When you get to the C suite, it is like, game on." (35:40)

7. Practical Tools: Listening, Pausing, Asking

Listening to Understand

• Stephanie’s favorite approach:

  "I’ll go, okay, let me just repeat back what I heard. Tell me if I’m wrong." (43:01)

• Silence and pauses allow brain processing and create opportunities for genuine understanding:

  "Silence is a powerful thing... When you’re silent and observing people’s body language and facial expressions—some of the most powerful things said are actually unspoken." (43:32)

Building Curiosity Habit

• Go out of your way to immerse yourself in unfamiliar environments and with different people:

  "Go emerge yourself into areas and people and dynamics that are not familiar to you. That’s one way that you override your natural instinct." (39:00)

Memorable Question for Connection:

"If you were a time traveler and you could either go forward and meet your descendants or backwards in time and meet your ancestors, which would you choose and why?" (42:09)

8. The Neuroscience of Bias & Inclusion

• Stephanie explains that our brains categorize unfamiliar people into "in-groups" or "out-groups," a survival instinct that needs to be consciously rewired through exposure and curiosity:

  "We’re not going to change the instinct... We can change the information we feed the brain so it’s not so quick to put people in the out group." (37:04)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Stephanie Chung [05:48]: "Always protect your team and always know there’s two sides to every story."
• Kim Scott [13:05]: "That was one of the hardest bits of feedback. I didn’t exactly solicit this feedback, but I got it."
• Stephanie Chung [14:47]: "When I do [offend you], not if, when I do it, I would ask that you would right then and there, stop me and correct me."
• Kim Scott [18:25]: "Not to judge or be judged."
• Stephanie Chung [23:16]: "I’m more focused on a curious leader. Because if you come in with curiosity, then by default you’re going to ask questions you don’t already know the answer to."
• Stephanie Chung [24:01]: "Diversity—not just in race and gender, but diversity of thought. Intellectual diversity is powerful."
• Stephanie Chung [34:10]: "People are starting to self-anoint themselves as an ally with absolutely no receipts to back up the statement."
• Stephanie Chung [35:40]: "Different level, different devil. When you get to the C suite, it is like, game on."
• Stephanie Chung [43:01]: "Let me just repeat back what I heard. Tell me if I’m wrong."
• Stephanie Chung [42:09]: "If you were a time traveler and you could either go forward and meet your descendants or backwards in time and meet your ancestors, which would you choose and why?"

Timestamps for Important Segments

• 03:01 — How Stephanie orients herself when brought in during organizational crisis
• 05:48 — Her father’s universal leadership advice
• 08:32 — Building trust with new teams
• 12:03 — The danger of snap judgments in new leadership positions
• 13:05 — Receiving and processing tough feedback as a leader
• 14:47 — Creating a culture where team members can correct you in real time
• 16:50 — A story about processing grief and respecting diverse emotional reactions
• 21:54 — Complexity of modern workforce diversity
• 23:16 — Why curiosity is a leader’s superpower
• 29:34 — Turning around a struggling, homogenous team
• 34:10 — False allyship vs. genuine, actionable support
• 39:00 — Practical tips for rewiring bias and embracing divergence
• 42:09 — Stephanie’s favorite question to build connection
• 43:01 — Active listening and the power of repeating back
• 43:32 — Using silence and observation to communicate
• 46:27 — Bonus: Stephanie’s advice for stress-free air travel

Conclusion & Takeaways

• Leading through chaos requires curiosity, patience, listening, and deliberate process focus—not snap judgments.
• Real trust takes time to build, starting with vulnerability and consistent follow-through.
• The ALLY framework (Ask, Listen, Learn, You Take Action) is vital for leading people “not like you”—which is now everyone’s job.
• True allyship in the workplace means action, not just intentions or after-the-fact support.
• Leaders must actively seek out uncomfortable truths, ask for feedback, and create spaces for real, direct conversations—especially in times of change.
• Embracing diversity is not optional; it’s both a moral and performance imperative.
• The leader’s legacy is written in the stories their people tell—choose to be the leader they remember for listening, caring, and challenging them with candor.

Connect with Stephanie Chung: stephaniechung.com
Book: Ally: How to Lead People Who Are Not Like You
Podcast notes and video: radicalcandor.com/podcast

This summary captures the full spirit and insights of the engaging workplace leadership discussion—full of candor, warmth, and practical wisdom.