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Not So Breakfast Show - Episode 221: Say What You Mean Without Being Mean

Ish and Sacha are live and in-person for only the third time in 222 episodes. Today's topic: how to challenge ideas and give feedback without being mean, plus how to receive that feedback without taking it personally. 

Also, the irony wasn't lost on anyone that an episode about "saying what you mean without being mean" started with Ish immediately talking shit about Hamilton.

Main Topics

• The Board Room Problem - Why New Zealand's cultural tendency to avoid conflict means we don't say what we think because we're worried about upsetting people, and how this confusion between supporting the person versus supporting their idea kills good decision-making
• Context is King - Setting up conversations properly by clarifying what type of feedback you want: "I'm only at 20% and want gentle guidance" versus "I need you to tell me everything that's wrong with this"
• Beyond the Shit Sandwich - Why the CRC model (commend, recommend, commend) actually makes feedback less effective, and how some people go overboard with the "CCCCCRCCC" approach where the critical part gets completely buried
• Creating Feedback Culture - Starting from day one by asking new team members how they like to receive feedback, then building regular rituals where rigorous conversation about work (not people) becomes the norm
• AI as Your Critical Friend - Using AI to transcribe meetings and ask: "What questions did we fail to consider?" and "Where has our desire to agree got in the way of high performance?"

Key Insights

• Separate the person from their idea - you can fully support someone while critiquing their project
• "We're after high performance, not harmony" should be your team's mantra
• Give presenters time to lay out their whole concept before jumping in with challenges
• Know your role: if you're always the challenger, try asking others to weigh in instead
• Prepare like they hate you, present like they love you

The Deeper Question

What's the essence of who you are when you strip away all the external stuff? Sacha shares her profound cancer journey insight about identity - if you lost your glasses, your job, even parts of your body, what core "you" remains? This separation helps you receive feedback about your work without it feeling like an attack on your worth.

Movie Recommendations Ish loved the new Brad Pitt F1 movie (action without violence!) and the latest Superman film that breaks the invincible hero trope from the opening scene.

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Ish opens with a ChatGPT-generated fairy tale intro featuring "the evil rental property™" as the villain tormenting Sir Ish, while Sacha reveals her big news: after 13 years in Hamilton, she and Chris are moving back to Christchurch! This house-hunting adventure becomes the perfect segue into exploring why storytelling is the secret weapon every salesperson needs.

Plus, Sacha finally realised that "Tina from Turner's" is a play on Tina Turner (better late than never!), while Ish discovered The Sound of Music was based on a true story. Also, Sacha's moving poem "Late at Night" perfectly captures the parenting experience.

Main Topics

• Story as Universal Language - Why Harvard Business School teaches everything through case studies (aka stories), and how stories engage logical thinkers, visual learners, and emotional decision-makers all at once
• From Complex to Simple - How the right story can take complicated information and make it instantly understandable, with real examples from construction, car sales, and gym memberships
• Building Your Story Bank - Starting with borrowed stories when you're new, then developing your own experience-based narratives that actually resonate (and why using Nelson Mandela stories makes everyone tune out)

Home Work

Record yourself telling a work story, then listen back and ask: Could I cut words? Am I making my point? How can I set this up differently to create a greater impact?

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Ish stays up past his bedtime (a whopping 8:12 pm!) to chat with Sacha's friend Aarti Bhanderi-Shah, who went from corporate law to driving around London with a car full of cold-pressed juices, pitching to 300 cafes in two weeks. Now a nutritionist, Aarti shares why sleep might be more important than your kale smoothie obsession.

Main Topics

• The Career Pivot Chronicles -- How Aarti went from studying law to auditing at PwC, then said "screw it" and started a cold-pressed juice company (possibly keeping the Queen alive with her royal deliveries to Fortnum & Mason)
• The Hustle Reality Check -- What it's really like to get up at 4am, load cooler boxes in your car, and drive around London selling juices while learning the hard way that shelf life is everything
• Joyful Eating Over Diet Culture -- Why Aarti ditches the word "diet" (it literally has "die" in it!) and focuses on her four-pillar approach: joyful eating, movement, sleep, and mindset
• The Sleep Revolution -- How society has lost 25% of its sleep in recent decades, and why your doughnut cravings might just be your exhausted brain crying for help

Key Insights

• Sometimes the best business education is jumping in with both feet and learning as you go
• Your worst food choices usually happen when you're tired - fix the sleep, fix the eating
• Having a business partner might save your sanity (and your business)
• Reframing language around health can completely change your relationship with wellness

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PS: Aarti watches Strictly Come Dancing (UK's Dancing with the Stars) while Ish is officially obsessed with Clarkson's Farm, where Jeremy gets injured in creative ways every episode. Also, sorry Netflix - this one goes to the BBC!

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Sacha returns from Fiji with a tan and a trauma—being unceremoniously booted from a Harvard WhatsApp group with 160 people, then discovering they had a whole discussion about her "eligibility" while she was locked out. What starts as a petty digital drama becomes a masterclass in understanding the difference between guilt and shame and why some wounds hit us harder than others.

Main Topics

• How Sacha went from Harvard alumna to "Category 6" (yes, her own special category) in a group chat cleanup gone wrong, triggering an unexpectedly visceral shame response
• The crucial difference between feeling bad about what you've done (guilt) versus feeling bad about who you are (shame), and why shame hits so much harder, because there's no clear path to redemption
• The Three Base Human Fears. Why being excluded tapped into Sacha's deepest fear of insignificance, making her feel "very small" and want to disappear entirely
• How shame triggers our ugliest behaviours—arguing, attacking, and trying to make ourselves smaller instead of addressing the real wound underneath

Key Insights

• How you deliver a decision can be more damaging than the decision itself
• When we're hurt, we invent stories to explain what happened, and they're usually wrong
• The "writing to the judge" principle: always communicate as if a neutral third party will read it later

PS: The episode opens with Ish's "birthday tribute" to Sacha—a photo of her with her hands down her pants (tucking in her shirt) set to U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For." Sacha's mum was genuinely concerned about her professional reputation. Meanwhile, Ish recommends "Ballerina" (the John Wick spin-off with Ana de Armas) while admitting he can't pronounce the lead actress's name properly.

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This week, we examine how our personal perspective determines whether we ruminate about the past, catastrophize about the future, or have public meltdowns with zero regard for consequences. 

Plus, the brutal truth about "future discounting" and why Sacha's been planning to start training for a half marathon for four weeks running.

Main Topics

• How your natural focus (past, present, or future) shapes everything from your leadership style to your procrastination patterns. 
• The sneaky way we convince ourselves that difficult tasks will somehow cost less energy "tomorrow" when we're magically more motivated, better rested, and perfectly organised
• Why zooming in for microscopic detail one day and flying high for big picture the next makes your team want to hide under their desks
• Treating your younger self with compassion (she was doing her best!) and your future self with kindness (she'll thank you for going for that run today)

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Sacha went a bit viral on LinkedIn with a post calling out the appalling way people were attacking former New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern's new book. What started as frustration with unprofessional discourse turned into a masterclass on why how you express yourself online matters for your career, and why women face disproportionate vitriol in public spaces.

Main Topics

• The LinkedIn Explosion -- How Sacha's post about maintaining dignity in professional discourse struck a nerve, generating massive engagement and revealing how many people share her frustration with the current state of online behaviour
• Professional Platforms vs. Personal Opinions -- The critical difference between having strong political views and expressing them in ways that damage your professional reputation. LinkedIn is your professional face. Act accordingly
• The "Never Heard of You" Chronicles -- A former executive's spectacular own goal when he claimed not to know Sacha, despite previously 'liking' threats against her online. 
• Disagreement Without Destruction -- Why learning to argue the point, not the person, is essential for both career advancement and functional democracy. Patrick Lencioni's insight on productive conflict in teams applies to all professional interactions

Key Insights

• Your online behaviour directly reflects your leadership style, and employers are watching
• The bar for acceptable discourse may have shifted downward, but that doesn't mean you should follow
• There's a commercial imperative to get good at disagreeing respectfully—it strengthens ideas and builds better teams
• What you wouldn't say to someone's face at a live event, you shouldn't say online either

Before your next online comment, ask yourself: "Would I say this to this person's face at a professional conference?" If not, don't type it.

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Sacha discovers that 80% of Forbes' "100 Most Powerful Women" are over 50 and has a full-blown existential celebration! In this episode, our hosts dive into recognising when it's time to make a move, overcoming the "I could do this, or this, or this" paralysis, and why women over 50 might just be hitting their professional stride.

Main Topics

• How to spot when you're in a natural transition (kids growing up, contracts ending) versus sitting in prolonged dissatisfaction that demands action
• Why having too many options can keep you stuck indefinitely, and Brendan Burchard's brutal advice: "Just pick one, because if it doesn't work, we'll do the other ones"
•  The shift from "What if I don't get the house?" in your 20s to "What if I lose the house?" in your 50s, and finding your sweet spot between playing it safe and betting the farm

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PS: Sacha continues her epic toe injury saga, now walking around in winter wearing one sandal and one sneaker because her kids complained about the mismatched footwear. She's since upgraded to two sandals in the rain, looking "like a crazy person" but at least matching! Meanwhile, Ish admits to classic impostor syndrome despite decades of evidence to the contrary.

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Ish and Sacha return from their international adventures (Chicago and Morocco, respectively) to tackle one of leadership's biggest challenges: how to develop your team without burning yourself out in the process. Is investing in people worth it if they might leave? (Spoiler: the alternative is worse!)

Plus, embracing "economy class" on their international flights, though Sacha (being tiny) had a much better time than Ish, who was squished next to "a big unit." Plus, Sacha has a mysterious foot infection that requires her to wear only one shoe. Just another day at the Not So Breakfast Show!

Main Topics

• Strengths vs Weaknesses - Why you should be "doubling down" on people's natural talents instead of obsessing over their shortcomings (with Sacha's brilliant dating analogy)
• Catch People Doing Things RIGHT - How to retrain your brain to spot the positive instead of fixating on problems (works with spouses and children too!)
• The Delegation Sweet Spot - Finding that perfect balance between challenging your team and completely overwhelming them with more than they can handle

Try the Coaching Default: Next time someone brings you a problem, resist the urge to solve it immediately and ask "What do you think we should do?" instead!

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Ever find yourself scrolling social media and suddenly feeling like a complete failure? In this fan-favourite episode, Ish and Sacha dive into why comparison can either fuel your fire or completely extinguish it! Get ready for some straight talk about why your Instagram envy might be holding back your best ideas.

Main Topics

• The Celebration Switch -- How to transform your social media doom-scrolling from comparison to celebration 
• The Confidence Paradox -- Sacha explains her brilliant theory about being "confident at being incompetent" and why being comfortable with being wrong might be your secret superpower
• 5% vs 100% -- Why you're comparing your messy behind-the-scenes with someone else's highlight reel (and Roger Federer's surprising 54% statistic that proves even legends fail constantly)

PS: Sacha shows up after a facial treatment involving "hundreds of thousands of tiny needles" that left her looking "like she's been near a nuclear reactor." Meanwhile, Ish recommends "Renegade Nell" on Disney+ where Nick Mohammad from Ted Lasso plays... a fairy who gives people superpowers?!

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Episode 212: Navigating the pace of change. 

From robots making your coffee to AI that can get hired for jobs through four online interviews, Ish and Sacha dive into the dizzying pace of technological change since they started podcasting. 

Get ready for tales of "digital souls," automated concert footage, and why saying "please" to ChatGPT might be destroying the planet.

Main Topics

• Your Digital Soul is Getting Creepy -- Discover why tech companies want to create AI agents that know you better than you know yourself (and whether you should let them)
• When Will Robots Replace Everything? -- From robot baristas to AI comedians, the hosts debate what jobs might still need that human touch (coffee culture appears safe... for now)
• The Ethics of Being Nice to Machines -- Learn why saying "thank you" to ChatGPT might contribute to climate change (but Sacha's still doing it because the uprising is coming!)

Ask Yourself: What tech are you resisting, and why? Text us your thoughts. 

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